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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

@medievaliste.bsky.social

4K followers 1K following 5.3K posts

lapsed professor research: music, political culture, and identity in medieval England and beyond academic editing and historical consulting ⤵️ glgower.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · Jul 2

Music and politics expert here. There is no music that is free from politics, because music is a human construct and whether or not we like to admit it, humans are all affected intimately by politics. Even music without words can express political ideas. You’re just noticing it for the first time.

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 4h

We had a term for them in grad school: "theory boys." You know, the guy who sat next to you in seminar and could spout off Habermas quotes all semester but couldn't (or wouldn't) acknowledge that theory detached from the texture of real lives is little more than abstraction pretending to be meaning

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 17h

Most of these people are deeply trained, or at least highly educated, in humanities. Knowing isn’t being.

brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 23h

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1m

Henrietta wouldn’t be this stupid

Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 3h

University leaders: [terminate programs, close campuses, cave in to political pressure from demagogues]

Faculty, students, staff: you’re killing the university

Management consultants: looks like you got a real comms challenge here

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 2h

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 2h

yeah man, trans reporters, whom the ny times derogatorily calls "trans activists" so that normies won't listen to them, have been reporting on ADF activity in the UK since 2018.

bigotry in journalism makes you late to the story.

Max Colbert @mc00.bsky.social · 4h

Really important NYT investigation finds that the ADF has been working with Reform, 'courting the party since at least 2024' and that the British arm 'orchestrated Mr Farage’s appearance in Congress, reaching out to ask if he would like to give evidence on censorship'
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

They Helped Topple Roe v. Wade. Now Their Sights Are Set on Britain.

www.nytimes.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 5m

AI could never

destructuring let @destructuring-let.bsky.social · 13h

like a master of qigong, he redirects the flow of clout from others and, cultivating it within himself, he manifests an enlightened awareness of the Three Treasures of a Poster: likes, replies and retweets.

screencaps flow from his dantien like breathe, his quotes are like a roaring waterfall.

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 7m

fuck you, pay me

Futurism @futurism.com · 6h

So that's where we're at.

Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren't Even "Real Work" to Start With

Worried that AI will destroy work? Well, Sam Altman asks if you've considered what a farmer from half a century ago thinks of your job, first.

trib.al

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 8m

I’m so sorry for your loss.

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 20m

I wish lefty protesters got paid. I’d be out there every damn day because these assholes destroyed my industry and I need to pay rent

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 9h

Even if there was evidence to support the idea that these students’ anxieties are broadly shared by their peers, they aren’t *new* anxieties. It’s just that now you can hear about them on Instagram and in the New York Times for some reason.

Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 23h

Here's a good example of the everything but the kitchen sink style of the piece. What is the evidence that students are more worried about being ostracized or feeling stupid or aligning their views the professor or more likely to take classes that might result in a good grade than before?

Students were afraid, the report said, of being socially ostracized. They were embarrassed about possibly sounding stupid. They felt that they had to align their viewpoints with their professor’s in order to get a good grade. And they chose their classes based on the likelihood of getting a good grade, rather than out of intellectual curiosity.

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Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 1d

Is THIS who you want writing your essay????

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

I am aware, thanks

Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

It’s “submit” and you don’t need to use three question marks to demonstrate that you didn’t read beyond the first sentence.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

If you believe, as many of these guys do, that your wealth is something you deserve, that it authorizes you to act with impunity, then yeah, you’re not going to like meeting people who don’t agree that rich=right.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

The right-wing donor class seems secure in the idea that no actual learning is required at university, presumably because they didn’t really have to do much of it in order to achieve success. But that arrogance reveals their deep discomfort with ideas that don’t confirm their self-belief

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

What right-wing elites are trying to do to universities reveals their total disinterest in education as not just a public good but as a *practice*. To them, college isn’t for learning; it’s a credentialing service that offers ongoing opportunities to network with other wealthy elites.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

The idea that alumni should have control over what courses a university offers just because they spent money on it is not unlike me deciding that Chipotle should start serving sushi because I got a mid salad there last week. That’s not what Chipotle is for!

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

If you’re an alumnus and you think your alma mater is on the wrong track, you can simply choose not to donate. I myself do this every time I toss an unopened solicitation from my undergrad university into the recycling bin.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

If you perceive a university as a poor fit for your personal values, then you can simply choose not to attend. Millions of high school seniors do this basic exercise in logic every year.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

“You can only teach/research the way I want you to” is bad whether it’s coming from right, left, center, your students, or your department chair.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

Either universities are private businesses that get to set their own priorities or they’re public goods that are obligated to serve everyone. You can’t have it both ways.

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

Jesus not this again

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 1d

seems like a non-insignificant percentage of rage against the machine's fanbase are young republican men driving SUVs bopping their head to anti-oil, pro-immigrant songs thinking the lyrics are about how they wish their suburban parents would get off their back

Tom Morello tweets: "Fascinating that all those “don’t tread on me” posers and their AR-15’s are nowhere to be seen and government tyranny is instead being opposed by a guy in an inflatable frog suit."

Someone named Manny replies: "@grok
why do some people say Tom Morello and band mates are RAGE FOR THE MACHINE and not against ?"

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

“Despite his apprehensions, [Sean Stevens from FIRE] said watchlists are often born from legitimate concerns, such as not enough conservative academics and concerns about rising tuition prices and return on investment.”

I’m sorry, one of these things is not like the other

Reposted by Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm)

Jillian @nogoodwyfe.bsky.social · 2d

the fact that rate my professor—violently commodifying and dehumanizing instructors w/o their consent or ability to opt out— is the ‘benign’ comparison is really a sign of how deep we are into the danger zone

Jeremy C. Young @jeremycyoung.bsky.social · 2d

I enjoyed speaking with Juliet Schulman-Hall for @masslive.bsky.social about how the Professor Watchlist and Canary Mission get us farther from, not closer to, a free exchange of ideas on campus. www.masslive.com/news/2025/10...

This isn’t Rate My Professor: Explosion in watchlists brings new threats to academics

Online commentary used to be limited to sites like "Rate My Professor," which jokingly rated how "hot" a professor was. It's changed drastically.

www.masslive.com

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Goblin Gower, PhD (the Ph is for Phantasm) @medievaliste.bsky.social · 1d

no one in academia will admit it but the P in PhD actually stands for Plumbing

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