Call for Contributions: Special Issue on the Systems Novel in the Twenty-First Century

Orbit is a peer-reviewed, digitally preserved, open-access journal with no author-facing charges. Part of @openlibhums.org

orbit.openlibhums.org/news/869/

✨ New Essay! ✨

@mattseybold.bsky.social agues that the new Mamdani administration ought to fund CUNY to develop its own public, open-source educational technology. The result stands to socialize the means of knowledge production for collaborative use across the entire US higher education system.

The NYC mayor‘s election might be the first big election where Millennials and Gen Zers realize that their broad participation can literally dictate the outcome of elections.

That alone is everything. It’s the way democracy will be reborn.

All day, many of you have been asking for a Cheney obituary from me. Get ready:

Dick Cheney did more than anyone else to build up expansive and destructive executive branch powers in the wake of 9/11; he lived to see another president turn those same powers against his own daughter.

He should be a warning sign to the GOP today but too many of them are in the cult.

Absolutely amazing: they've got so much solar in Australia that they need more people to use more of it, so the gov't has instructed energy retailers to offer *at least three hours of free power* during the middle of the day.

Meanwhile fossil-addled US struggles with an energy-price crisis ...

For years people made fun of big tech for inventing things that already exist and they responded with their magnum opus: inventing fascism. Incredible work

The last one is the best.

CAMPUS VISIT WITH THE VAMPIRE

TEACHING DEMO WITH THE VAMPIRE

SIT-DOWN WITH THE DEAN WITH THE VAMPIRE

APOLOGETIC EMAIL THAT THE SEARCH WAS CANCELED WITH THE VAMPIRE

If he runs for a "third term," so should Obama.

I feel like I say this every year but I really need people to hear it. Halloween is the best American holiday. Just kids outside welcomed into their world, marching around together, showing off their costumes to the elderly, parents meeting parents, neighbors catching up with neighbors.

speaking of heists! everything you ever wanted to know about the heyday of the cinematic genre and what that has to do with Hollywood finance

The President wants to use the military to crack down on Americans who are exercising their 1st Amendment rights to oppose him. I can’t think of a better reason to insist on exercising those rights.

Techbros: "Don't worry dear humanity; we'll take away the toil of creating art so that you can focus your efforts on building our Ziggurats, and consume entertainment content *cough* art, generated on the fly as entertainment during your breaks between shifts in your cabins to pay of perpetual debt"

hmm really not a good time psychologically to be reading “nuclear war: a scenario”

Or put slightly differently: grokipedia is an epistemic weapon.

Amazon just announced 14,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $40M last year.

UPS announced 48,000 layoffs. Its CEO made over $24M last year.

Intel announced 20,000 layoffs. Its new CEO's pay package is valued at nearly $69M.

This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.

The shower of bullshit is a great tactic.

If you know nothing they can get you to do anything.

It's pub day (birthday 0?) for Writing Through Writer's Block: Lessons from Modern American Fiction! This is a study of how authors have used the archetype of the blocked writer to identify, analyze, and ultimately work through both internal and external constraints on their creative abilities.

Enormous news for US literature. A new, Mellon-led, $50 million fund for nonprofit literary orgs and publishers. Closest thing we've ever had to it was Mellon and Wallace in 1991, which, in today's dollars, was still less than half this. Open call begins Nov 10. literaryartsfund.org/about/

I have a very bad feeling about this...

the democratic party’s basic problem is it has almost no control over how its message reaches the ears of voters, especially outside of presidential election years. but rather than devote serious time, attention and cash to that problem its consultants and pundits want to fight factional battles

Once again, the main day of Tea Party protests had about 300,000 nationwide, but saw endless coverage.

The No Kings protests had about 7,000,000 nationwide, and many media outlets reacted with a yawn.

No Kings was nearly 25x as big as the Tea Party but the Tea Party got 25x the attention.

a repeal of the right to culture, maybe less spectacular than infringing other rights but definitely no less grave

hyperallergic.com/1049388/how-...