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Hester Blum

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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Skrillex
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Yesssssss @sunsetandecho.bsky.social !!
Sarah Mesle’s brilliant new book Reasons & Feelings: writing for the humanities now, with a bright red-pink cover featuring a tattoo-style arrow, saying hello to my tattoo of a Temple toggle harpoon head
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
A minor G on you
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
The Penn State BoT is killing the public radio station. WPSU serves a half million rural Pennsylvanians, and it was cut at the same time the Board gave the PSU president--whose greatest hits include closing 7 (seven!) PSU campuses--a 1.1 million dollar raise. Please sign

www.change.org/p/save-wpsu
Sign the Petition
SAVE WPSU
www.change.org
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Freakonomics just re-aired its three-part series on the history of whaling – it was a joy and an honor to be part of that conversation: freakonomics.com/podcast/what...
What Can Whales Teach Us About Clean Energy, Workplace Harmony, and Living the Good Life? (Update) - Freakonomics
What Can Whales Teach Us About Clean Energy, Workplace Harmony, and Living the Good Life? (Update) - Freakonomics
freakonomics.com
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
If only the non-Lego Endurance were so well cradled
The fully-constructed Lego Endurance, elaborately packed by excellent movers and ungrammatically labeled
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
(the story of how I came to have Melville's commode: avidly.org/2021/12/05/h...)
Herman Melville’s Commode
I have recently become the reverential custodian of a commode that belonged to Herman Melville. I achieved this honor through an unlikely sequence of events that began with a Facebook post about a …
avidly.org
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
thank you, very excited!
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
We are about to move, I finally opened the bottle of hard cider made from apples from Arrowhead, Melville's farm. It was dry and lovely and I drank it amid the packed-up broken pieces of marble that top Melville's commode, which I was even more wonderfully given a few years ago.
The wooden surface of a c19 commode, missing its marble topping, with joinery and screw visible. yr correspondent with a glass of cider sitting on the floor of an old, garishly painted house surrounded by packed-up bits of art and broken marble and a leather couch not yet packed My spouse pouring out a green bottle of cider made from Herman Melville's apple trees, with the cap labeled "A" for Arrowhead
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Resharing my A.I. statement for the fall semester—I’ll be amending “hallucinatory” because hallucinations are actually interesting and original.
hesterblum.bsky.social
Hester Blum @hesterblum.bsky.social · Jan 9
My draft of a syllabus statement on a.i. for my writing class, for what it is worth:
A NOTE ON GENERATIVE AI This class helps you to be a better writer and thinker. Generative AI (ChatGPT and other platforms) is neither writing nor thinking. Any use of AI in this class (whether to write, brainstorm, outline, or summarize) will be considered a violation of academic integrity. It undermines your intellectual development, for one: AI content is often inaccurate or hallucinatory and is always boring, banal, and average. This is by design, as generative AI works by predicting the most obvious or basic sequencing of words. Good writing—writing that is persuasive, powerful, lively, funny, surprising, rousing, insightful, transformative, provocative—requires human work. Human creativity is weird and variable and uneven, but it holds the capacity for growth, revelation, empathy, and brilliance. I urge you not to abandon the glorious experiential potential of human messiness and transformation for the tedium of robot sentences. One further reason to abjure generative AI, especially in a class on environmental literature: in addition to its counterproductivity to your work as a writer and thinker, AI is enormously environmentally destructive.
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Excellent to see this resource, @annakornbluh.bsky.social—thank you. (I’ll be updating my syllabus statement from last spring: bsky.app/profile/hest...)
annakornbluh.bsky.social
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15
teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com
AGAINST AI
against-a-i.com
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Reposted by: Hester Blum, Elizabeth Sharrow, South África , and 14 more

annakornbluh.bsky.social
teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com
AGAINST AI
against-a-i.com
43 430 750

Reposted by: Hester Blum, Lisa Diedrich

View post

by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
This is super excellent, Haaris!
feinsod.bsky.social
Harris Feinsod @feinsod.bsky.social · Aug 8
We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/
Home | The Tidewater Initiative
We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...
sites.krieger.jhu.edu
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Reposted by: Hester Blum

feinsod.bsky.social
We're launching a new Tidewater Initiative at JHU. Our research group on working waterfronts and coastal infrastructures includes a new student research lab, courses, programming partnerships with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and more in the works. sites.krieger.jhu.edu/tidewater/
Home | The Tidewater Initiative
We are a multidisciplinary research group devoted to study, stewardship, and stories of working waterfronts, coastal infrastructures, and oceans under conditions of globalization and environmental ins...
sites.krieger.jhu.edu
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
self-hugged 🙋‍♀️
2

by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Happy birthday HM
Bananas paragraph from Herman Melville's Mardi: "And here, in this impenetrable retreat, centrally slumbered the universe-rounded, zodiac-belted, horizon-zoned, sea-girt, reef-sashed, mountain-locked, arbor-nested, royalty-girdled, arm-clasped, self-hugged, indivisible Donjalolo, absolute monarch of Juam:—the husk-inhusked meat in a nut; the innermost spark in a ruby; the juice-nested seed in a goldenrinded orange; the red royal stone in an effeminate peach; the insphered sphere of spheres."
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Reposted by: Hester Blum

profkori.bsky.social
Look at what the fabulous Dr. Sarah Mesle and I are up to!!! We’re offering a seminar at C19's 2026 conference in Cincinnati, Ohio! Proposals aren't due until September 15th, so you've got plenty of time. Spread the word!

Details on how to apply, etc., at www.c19society.org/2026-confere...
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Ooooh that looks excellent
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Ephemera studies is the best
tchotchke.bsky.social
Allegra Rosenberg @tchotchke.bsky.social · Jul 25
let out a very happy sound at the sight of @hesterblum.bsky.social cited in this book about early 20th century female film fangirls ... MY INTERESTS !!!
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Oh wow, this makes me happy, thank you Allegra!! What is the book?
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Reposted by: Hester Blum

tchotchke.bsky.social
let out a very happy sound at the sight of @hesterblum.bsky.social cited in this book about early 20th century female film fangirls ... MY INTERESTS !!!
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Meredith McGill‘s chapter in my edited collection Turns of Event addresses this beautifully! @mlmcgill.bsky.social
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Well-governed angels the both of them
victorianlondon.bsky.social
VictorianLondon @victorianlondon.bsky.social · Jul 5
The romantic fiction you didn't know you wanted to read.
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Reposted by: Hester Blum

victorianlondon.bsky.social
The romantic fiction you didn't know you wanted to read.
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Nobody in government is monitoring anything but their vile appetites
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
My therapist today was asking me about moving from an allegedly purple state to a red state and I was saying that Pennsylvania has not felt like a safe place in a while. Fuck Penn (I’m a PhD alum and will never support Penn again), fuck the state medical systems that are now betraying trans kids.
yasharali.bsky.social
Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · Jul 1
BREAKING

The University of Pennsylvania has come to an agreement with the Trump administration on what the Department of Education said was its Title IX violations.

This will include stripping trans athlete Lia Thomas of her records, titles, and recognitions.
• UPenn will restore to female athletes all individual UPenn Division I swimming records, titles, or similar recognitions which were misappropriated by male athletes allowed to compete in female categories; • UPenn will issue a public statement to the University community stating that it will comply with Title IX, specifying that UPenn will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs or occupy Penn Athletics female intimate facilities; • The statement will specify that UPenn will adopt biology-based definitions for the words 'male' and 'female' pursuant to Title IX and consistent with President Trump's Executive Orders "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism" and "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports"; • UPenn will post the statement in a prominent location on its main website and on each of its websites for women's athletics; • UPenn will rescind any guidance which violated Title IX, remove or revise any internal and public-facing statements or documents that are inconsistent with Title IX, and notify all staff and women's athletics of all such rescissions; and • UPenn will send a personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer.
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Reposted by: Hester Blum, Shannon Vallor, Juliet B. Schor , and 2 more

yasharali.bsky.social
BREAKING

The University of Pennsylvania has come to an agreement with the Trump administration on what the Department of Education said was its Title IX violations.

This will include stripping trans athlete Lia Thomas of her records, titles, and recognitions.
• UPenn will restore to female athletes all individual UPenn Division I swimming records, titles, or similar recognitions which were misappropriated by male athletes allowed to compete in female categories; • UPenn will issue a public statement to the University community stating that it will comply with Title IX, specifying that UPenn will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs or occupy Penn Athletics female intimate facilities; • The statement will specify that UPenn will adopt biology-based definitions for the words 'male' and 'female' pursuant to Title IX and consistent with President Trump's Executive Orders "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism" and "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports"; • UPenn will post the statement in a prominent location on its main website and on each of its websites for women's athletics; • UPenn will rescind any guidance which violated Title IX, remove or revise any internal and public-facing statements or documents that are inconsistent with Title IX, and notify all staff and women's athletics of all such rescissions; and • UPenn will send a personalized letter of apology to each impacted female swimmer.
400 590 1.4K

by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
Can’t teach about gender or queer books in schools, can be “100% cool and 0% awkward”
A bus advertising “true girl” which promises to bring “moms and daughters closer to God and to each other,” in teal and pink lettering At the back of the same bus, in red white and blue lettering, the boys version which is called “born to be brave, a one night father son adventure” Close up on the profound cringe of the line “100% cool 0% awkward”
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by Hester Blum

hesterblum.bsky.social
“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.”
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