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amandaannklein.bsky.social
Cyber Mandy Sales!
@amandaannklein.bsky.social
media studies professor writing historical fiction. bylines: New Yorker, Salon, Atlantic, KERA, Vice, E!

Views expressed are my own

Millennials Killed the Video Star: https://www.dukeupress.edu/millennials-killed-the-video-star
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Looking for a crash course on the early history of reality TV? Check out this bonus episode from "Curse of America's Next Top Model" featuring yours truly!

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...
Reality TV: The Great Experiment
Podcast Episode · Curse of: America’s Next Top Model · S1, E1 Bonus · 57m
podcasts.apple.com
cannot get over the cat's monocle
Here are some clever ones from early film history:
December 3, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Each semester I offer students an extra credit assignment where they can make memes based on class content. This year they offered up some solid ones, including a spot-on meme about my macabre taste in movies:
December 3, 2025 at 8:54 PM
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With Tuesday’s White House Cabinet meeting chugging past the two-hour mark, Trump ‘s eyes fluttered and closed. His budget director busied himself doodling a fluffy cloud. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was lucky enough to speak early, but the title on his nameplate was misspelled.
Doodling, drowsiness and a conspicuous misspelling highlight Trump's last Cabinet meeting of 2025
President Donald Trump's latest Cabinet meeting lasted over two hours. Trump's eyes fluttered as he struggled to keep them open at times.
apnews.com
December 3, 2025 at 1:27 AM
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“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.”

Bezos may have signed off on this WaPo oped by George Will. That’s how bad things are for Trump.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | A sickening moral slum of an administration
Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 3, 2025 at 1:34 AM
My film history students were tasked w/ adding 400 words to Wikipedia on ANY topic related to pre-WWII cinema. During our class recap about their research processes, several mentioned the "challenge" of going to a "physical library" and using "hard-cover books."
December 2, 2025 at 9:10 PM
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HBOMax has started showing a 'remastered' 4K Mad Men and they’ve messed things up so during Roger’s oyster vomit scene you can now see the crew men with the vomit hose on the right
December 2, 2025 at 11:28 AM
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Trump appears to be sleeping as Sean Duffy talks during his Cabinet meeting
December 2, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Want to know a little more about the status of the music video and its history? Check me out on this BBC Business Daily segment with @danielrosney.bsky.social

www.bbc.com/audio/play/w...
BBC Audio | Business Daily | Is it the end of the music video?
Streaming is changing how record companies want to promote artists
www.bbc.com
December 2, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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My Target, last year: bsky.app/profile/bian...

"stocking stuffers"🙄
Target, what are you doing?
December 1, 2025 at 11:02 PM
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Alright, listen.

We're doing Holiday Hot Takes this year. Every day a new take on some cultural media about the holidays such as today's:

The three hardest Christmas songs ever written are Christmas in Hollis by Run-D.M.C, Father Christmas by The Kinks, and I Wish It Was Christmas Today from SNL.
A Song From SNL: I Wish It Was Christmas Today - SNL
YouTube video by Saturday Night Live
youtu.be
December 1, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Looking for a crash course on the early history of reality TV? Check out this bonus episode from "Curse of America's Next Top Model" featuring yours truly!

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...
Reality TV: The Great Experiment
Podcast Episode · Curse of: America’s Next Top Model · S1, E1 Bonus · 57m
podcasts.apple.com
December 1, 2025 at 7:12 PM
They are also shocked and even scared when you call on them in class—and it’s not about not understanding the question. They will write down an answer and when I ask them to read it to me they just:
November 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM
It is worse this semester than at any other point in my 25 year career. It’s not just the AI. They don’t turn in assignments and are perpetually surprised that they need to submit work at all. They come to class but many are not “there” mentally.
An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.
November 29, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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Like 30% of the country is absolutely enraged because they thought they were going to be able to be utter shitbirds without anyone being allowed to call them shitbirds, but here we are, calling them shitbirds.
November 29, 2025 at 6:06 PM
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Pour one out for a legend

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies at 88
www.bbc.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:17 PM
My son just told me who Jank Boteko is and I am furious about the internet
November 29, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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The president has illegally declared war to stop fentanyl trafficking from a country that does not traffic that drug, claiming its leader is trafficking drugs himself, the day after pardoning a former leader of a country who is a convicted drug trafficker.
Just to level set
November 29, 2025 at 4:47 PM
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The legal, media, and academic institutions capitulating to an authoritarian ordering payments for favorable treatment are damning themselves to irrelevance. They are destroying their institutions. They will be — and should be — shunned for failing in their most basic purposes for existing.
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
November 29, 2025 at 1:37 AM
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The OpenAI ruling writers should know about 👀 (if your work was scraped for LLM training, this affects you). www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
OpenAI Loses Key Discovery Battle as It Cedes Ground to Authors in AI Lawsuits
The issue has been a major battleground in discovery. OpenAI could be on the hook for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars if it was aware it was infringing on copyrighted material.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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It’s tiresome and repetitive but I think it may be imperative every time fascism tells this fundamentally antisemitic lie that every Jew who knows even a bit of what’s what—I know a bit—says explicitly “this isn’t for me. It’s against me & everyone human.”
Statement from U.S. AG Pam Bondi:

“Today’s settlement marks another victory in the Trump Administration’s fight to ensure that American educational institutions protect Jewish students and put merit first…
November 29, 2025 at 12:50 PM
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Just catching up with the budget coverage in the papers.
November 29, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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This is so deeply at odds with the vision and history of America. Take pretty much any ethnic or racial group that are part of the American mosaic America today - they have all faced the same accusation. The moment these accusations are turned into policy are some of the most shameful in US history
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 1:58 PM
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GenAI is a fascist product. Sorry you don’t have the moral fortitude to do your own thinking, but fascists love that
November 26, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Omfg how did I miss the turtleneck thing!
November 25, 2025 at 11:45 PM
My Insta algorithm is so carefully curated that all I get are baby hippo vids and Ariana/Cynthia memes.
a cartoon of a chef with a needle in his mouth is playing at 4:32
Alt: a cartoon of a chef with a needle in his mouth is playing at 4:32
media.tenor.com
November 25, 2025 at 7:13 PM