David Shumway
David Shumway
@nearleft.bsky.social

Professor of English, Carnegie Mellon. Film, popular music, literature. All opinions are my own.

Art 42%
Communication & Media Studies 10%
The point of the AI project is to provoke despair in creative people. They haven’t produced profits or anything anyone wants, just a steady stream of articles about how us artistic types can’t do the thing we’re already doing, making art. Jokes on them, we’re even better at despair than they are.

Modern factories: are those from 1700s, the 1800s, or the 1900s?

Let’s see this all over Maine.

My top ten Westerns (in no particular order)

Rio Bravo
McCabe and Mrs Miller
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Shane
Little Big Man
Red River
The Searchers
Lone Star
High Noon
Top Ten Westerns (alphabetical)

Aferim!
Black God, White Devil
The Devil’s Doorway
Forty Guns
Little Big Man
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Once Upon a Time in the West
Ride the High Country
Ulzana’s Raid
The Wild Bunch
Top-10 Fave Westerns:
Rio Bravo
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Once Upon a Time in the West
Bacurau
The Shooting
Little Big Man
Brokeback Mountain
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Winchester ‘73
The Quick and the Dead

Reposted by David R. Shumway

Top Ten Westerns (alphabetical)

Aferim!
Black God, White Devil
The Devil’s Doorway
Forty Guns
Little Big Man
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Once Upon a Time in the West
Ride the High Country
Ulzana’s Raid
The Wild Bunch
Top-10 Fave Westerns:
Rio Bravo
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Once Upon a Time in the West
Bacurau
The Shooting
Little Big Man
Brokeback Mountain
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Winchester ‘73
The Quick and the Dead

Here’s looking at you, Pittsburgh.
Snowstorms are more than just an inconvenience for wheelchair users. Inadequate snow clean-ups means a loss of autonomy for many. New for me at @motherjones.com www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Snowstorms are hell for wheelchair users—but they don't have to be
"You can't physically move. You can't do anything."
www.motherjones.com

CNN is Fox News light.
Anyway congrats to our Free Speech Champions(tm) who helped usher in the most censorious American government since the Palmer Raids

The World of Leonard Cohen at the CUP Bookstore in Cambridge.
From climate change, to Chinese politics, to Leonard Cohen, we've got a very wide range of new titles this week! 🙌

📖 'Still No Miracles Needed' by @mzjacobson.bsky.social
📖 'The Communist Party of China' by Ben Hillman and Fengyuan Ji
📖 'The World of Leonard Cohen' by @nearleft.bsky.social

Who could have guessed?

CBS
Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump.

Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.
Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.

Vote them all out.

Reposted by David R. Shumway

Trump’s “Board of Peace” is a Board of Dictators — ICE terror at home, cash for autocrats abroad, and Trump deciding who’s protected. That’s not peace. It’s a protection racket.

READ & SHARE NEW SUBSTACK🙏⬇️
THE BOARD OF DICTATORS
Trump’s Fake “Peace” Scheme Is a Global Protection Racket—With Terror at Home and Grift Abroad
open.substack.com
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Reposted by David R. Shumway

Hey beautiful losers, this week the books series has ed David Shumway @nearleft.bsky.social talking new collection THE WORLD OF LEONARD COHEN w/ contribs @touchofallright.bsky.social, @eweisbard.bsky.social & Sarah Hill. Wed 5:30 pm ET, achieve satori here: iaspm-us.wildapricot.org/Popular-Musi...

In the past year especially. Garbage in, garbage out.

Reposted by David R. Shumway

it is an incredible coincidence that the tech sector going all-in on AI is also owned by people that want to destroy the institutions of democratic life

Reposted by David R. Shumway

If you are a wealthy landlord.
This was published in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s. If you work in education & were, reasonably, taking a break, maybe you missed it.

Don’t miss it.
The ‘Crisis of the Humanities’ Is Over. That’s Not a Good Thing.
All of higher ed now suffers the attacks of politics and technology.
www.chronicle.com

Primary!

Apparently taking lessons from the NY Times.

His offense is looking pretty good at the end of 3.

No shit?

Replace Schumer now!
Trump must be impeached immediately. This is not how a democracy functions.