Elyse Vigiletti
evig.bsky.social
Elyse Vigiletti
@evig.bsky.social
advice columns, 20C American print culture, feedback loops in writing instruction
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.
BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!!

We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
November 15, 2025 at 12:01 AM
When it comes to money, a husband is like a room you are locked inside of. You can't access your own shit without his permission, but nobody bothers you about it, either.

My single friends get to be "Account Holder" instead of "Spouse," but also have to endure every bro's unsolicited advice.
November 13, 2025 at 4:41 PM
“What did Watson and Crick discover?
Rosalind Franklin’s notes.”
November 7, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Nobody pities you like your own teenage progeny.
me, seeing that the neighbors have set up an inflatable cauldron + 3 witches display ahead of Halloween: oh, look, the three witches from Macbeth

17yo, pityingly: those are the witches from Hocus Pocus
October 30, 2025 at 4:58 PM
You gotta embrace a *little* Nazi shit, or you'll lose the "white working-class" -- a population famously averse to confrontation!
Or maybe, from the author of Lower Ed: "racism is not a natural condition of poverty but a political weapon that rich men use to constrain poor people’s political power"
Opinion | A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness
www.nytimes.com
October 30, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Cursory lookup suggests this was Mad Magazine, 1969. The first thing you learn when you study old newspapers is that our stories have always been exactly the same. The only thing that really changes are the names (fewer Franks and Hermans these days) and the fonts.
October 25, 2025 at 1:09 AM
lol great advice, instead of buying bananas you can just grow some in your garden in Michigan in November. Also you should probably get a cow or something
On Threads, the usual suspects are telling ppl about to lose SNAP benefits to just start a garden. As a gardener, I had to laugh. You need at LEAST an acre of land to feed a family of 4. Start-up costs are enormous. But yes, subsistence farming on the balcony of your rental apartment is the answer
October 23, 2025 at 8:39 PM
these jagoffs hate getting laughed at, so I'm just doing my civic duty here www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSfC...
Pam Bondi Hearing Cold Open - SNL
YouTube video by Saturday Night Live
www.youtube.com
October 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Haven't read the book but I like the "wizard" analogy in this post. AI critiques are often either values-based or focused on specific technical limitations that might well get resolved. This one identifies an inherent practical problem: is anything "good" if humans have no way of evaluating it?
On Working with Wizards
Verifying magic on the jagged frontier
www.oneusefulthing.org
September 22, 2025 at 6:49 PM
literally biblically, I'm pretty sure
You are literally, constitutionally and biblically allowed to do this.
Trump:

"When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump... They're not allowed to do that."
September 22, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Have a loved one who's literally never set foot on a uni campus yet is 💯 positive that universities are poorly run + medical research is harmful because if we just got people to avoid seed oils they wouldn't need cancer treatment. No way to argue with that. Maybe our best hope is arguing around it?
aaup.org AAUP @aaup.org · Sep 18
Devastating funding cuts halt medical breakthroughs and slash support for students.

Join our letter-writing campaign and tell your members of Congress to support the life-saving scientific research!

@aft.org
@afthighered.bsky.social

Send a letter at the link below👇
Support American science in federal funding
Our health and safety depend on scientific research. America is currently the world leader in cutting-edge medical and scientific research, and we want to keep it that way. Families need safe…
actionnetwork.org
September 18, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Idly wondering about the media practices of people in countries limited to state TV. Does everybody just quit bothering with TV and do something else? (The "trust" section of the "state media" Wikipedia entry, which is all the effort I've put into learning about this, is sparse and contested.)
September 18, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
Jarvis: I hate to say this to my friends here at CNN, mass media is dying, so they're taking the last of these vestiges of institutions that matter and they're trying to turn them into propaganda organs under threat from the head of the FCC
September 18, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country's leader on TV without repurcussions.
July 18, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
I’m an English professor in the US in 1967. I bought a house in town my first year on the job and earned tenure with two articles. My wife cooks my meals and my secretary does my typing. I have to read all the books published this year about the one author I study. There were two of them.
September 7, 2025 at 10:05 PM
This just in: reasoning only works on the reasonable.
September 5, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
I am once again asking you to stop sending us money.

But we do need your time. ⏰

zohranfornyc.com/events
September 5, 2025 at 1:10 PM
Labor Day activity: finding “Letting the Cat Out of the Bag” in its original context. It seems to be from Solidarity, the UAW newsletter (previously called The United Automobile Worker until 1957). UM has the 1937 issues on microfilm, but I’m not going to work today so pulling it will have to wait.
September 1, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
August 27, 2025 at 6:42 PM
I can feel my reading practice transforming into that thing where I mentally connect every single idea to an article I have marinating now. It's like academic conversational narcissism.
August 15, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
All academic institutions will soon realize we are in this together, facing an autocratic ruler who wants to destroy academia, science, and public health (together with media and courts - pick up a history book).

There is only one solution - stand up, speak up, and, critically, collective action.
cnn.com CNN @cnn.com · Aug 8
Exclusive: The Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement from UCLA cnn.it/3UPtS3V
August 8, 2025 at 8:42 PM
So much of the hype for and resistance to genAI has fuck-all to do with the concept of a computer writing a paragraph. It’s almost entirely about money - who owns these tools, who they’re exploiting to make them, and whose professions they’re going to be mistaken as an adequate replacement for
August 8, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Elyse Vigiletti
Voting Rights Act turns 60 today. I've studied VRA for 15 years. Most people don't realize just how much it transformed American democracy, ended Jim Crow & enfranchised millions of Americans

Now it’s on life support. If it dies, American democracy dies with it www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
The nation's landmark voting rights law just turned 60. It may not survive Trump.
“The long-term game is to repeal the Voting Rights Act.”
www.motherjones.com
August 6, 2025 at 9:42 PM