Casey
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drcothran.bsky.social
Casey
@drcothran.bsky.social
700 followers 1.2K following 81 posts
Lover of teaching, writing, 19th century British literature, detective fiction, and fairy tales.
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Reposted by Casey
rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
Córy Doctorow with another verbal bullseye: pluralistic.net/2026/01/13/n...
I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows. I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.
January 18, 2026 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Casey
uncleduke1969.bsky.social
it’s just been me and dad since calgon took mom in ‘86
January 16, 2026 at 1:57 PM
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goldenearthgirl.bsky.social
January 14, 2026 at 10:03 PM
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plaguepoems.bsky.social
My friend,
the climatologist, told me
this year
is off to a bad start.

My friend,
the epidemiologist, told me
this year
is off to a bad start.

My friend,
the historian, told me
this year
is just getting started.
January 15, 2026 at 12:06 AM
Reposted by Casey
flfreedomread.bsky.social
We updated our censorship attempts tracking for the first time since Winter Break today.

All activity is tied to two people and one special interest group in Clay, Nassau, Santa Rosa, Polk, and Escambia. Decisions posted for Clay & Nassau, still waiting on Polk PRRs.

www.fftrp.org/florida_cens...
Florida Censorship Attempts
View all of the tracked censorship attempts in Florida since fall of 2021.
www.fftrp.org
January 11, 2026 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Casey
illdottore.bsky.social
Logging back on briefly to encourage you to go read this issue of Pasts Imperfect, where I have an essay about the push to automate literacy in the contemporary academy and the relegation and subjection of literacy in Ancient Rome pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperf...
Pasts Imperfect (1.8.26)
This week, we are back from holiday break with a deep dive into the ethics, big business, and myth-peddling of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education. Then, bees in ancient jawbones within t...
pasts-imperfect.ghost.io
January 8, 2026 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Casey
nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social
Puss in Boots — Gustave Doré, 1862
Black and white art engraving a cat standing in a hind legs and it's front paws raised in the air swearing a big hat with a bigger pool a cape and of course thigh high boots we see behind him sort of hiding in a swamp it looks like guy whom he is helping out if I remember the story correctly
October 14, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Reposted by Casey
dfphotography.bsky.social
Here is my most favourite photo of 2025. I’ve come to describe my images as capturing the moments between the moments. This image a pause in play, a small paw reaching up, tiny claws extended is absolute trust.
I find these moments tell the story best.
#bear #brownbear #wildlifephotography #Alaska
A brown bear cub reaching for its mom
December 31, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Casey
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Solvitur ambulando is my favourite Latin phrase. It means "it is solved by walking".
A photograph I took quite early on New Year's Day, 2019, while walking on the Isle of Purpeck, not long before I did a tweet using it, and the same caption. I imagine it won't have as much impact here, since loads of people have since reused it, and the phrase is now more widely known. It is still very very true, though. Lots of things are solved by walking. Although not everything, obviously.
November 13, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Casey
aselrod.bsky.social
And I think liberals should stop taking the bait and ceding ground on immigration.

Immigration is good. Multiculturalism is good. Free trade is good. Stop being embarrassed to say so.
December 31, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Casey
lukesteuber.com
I think about this a lot
The sheer prosperity of the country could be breathtaking. I had just come back from Senegal when the Guardian sent me on assignment to rust belt Ohio, during the first stirrings of Trumpism, back in 2015. I was there to report on the growing swell of populism by way of the postindustrial immiseration of middle America. I was stopping for gas on the way to a rally, and at the station they were selling a hotdog with as much chilli and cheese as you liked for $1.99. The chilli and cheese came out of the wall. You pressed two buttons, one for chilli and one for cheese. On the streets of Dakar, children hawk packs of peanuts and plastic bags of clean water on the street, and I wondered if you could even explain to them that there existed a place, on the same earth, where chilli and liquid cheese came out of a wall, and you could have as much of it as you liked for the equivalent of 20 minutes' work at the minimum wage, and that some of the people in that place considered themselves so hard done by that their resentful fury threatened the political order, that they just wanted to burn it all down.
December 31, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Reposted by Casey
oddthisday.bsky.social
Well, if it’s 31 December, it’s... yes, of course: 172nd anniversary of the dinner Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, creator of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, gave for 21 leading academics and other VIPs inside the Iguanodon
Dinner in the Iguanodon model from the Illustrated London News: shows a huge dinosaur model with its back section missing or unfinished, with men sitting inside it. Around it stands a stage, with steps up, around which waiters are moving with trays. The whole thing stands inside a huge set of drapes, presumably on some kind of frame, as there is a chandelier hanging above the dinosaur
December 31, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Casey
jayhulmepoet.bsky.social
Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up.

I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.
A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video A screenshot from Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you up music video A photograph of the seminary gym in knives out. It has the same window.
December 29, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Casey
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
The other thing about normalizing gAI use in higher ed is that we are teaching our students that they cannot trust their own creativity, their own thoughts and brains, their own skills without having it reshaped/shellacked/transmogrified by LLMs. We’re setting them up for failure and dependence.
December 28, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Casey
oldmatecans.bsky.social
Knives out: the upper middle class are squabbling vicious children who do not deserve their inheritance

Glass onion: the new elite are the stupidest murderous cunts alive and deserve your scorn

Wake up dead man: those preaching anger as salvation are leading you to death, hope and kindness matter
December 28, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Casey
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
Welsh artist Gwen John, Cat study, c.1904 #WomensArt
Painting of a tortoiseshell cat lying down facing forwards with head up and legs hidden
December 27, 2025 at 8:29 AM
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mishellbaker.bsky.social
A reminder to all that Scrooge's apathy about Christmas was not actually the problem. The problem was his GENERAL apathy, greed, lack of compassion, and outright cruelty. His character arc specifically talks about how he's now going to be caring, jovial, and generous the whole year through.
December 24, 2025 at 9:27 PM
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nursebrianrn.bsky.social
the person who invented righty tighty, lefty loosey really fucking nailed it.
December 12, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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suss2hyphens.bsky.social
Guy threatening to stab someone else meme. The guy in a defensive stance is labeled "Time Magazine" the guy with the knife is labeled "The dictionary"
December 15, 2025 at 2:45 PM
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jcsalterego.bsky.social
another day at the uncrustables factory decrusting these crustables
February 11, 2025 at 11:08 PM
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aktange.bsky.social
If we really want to screw with AI scrapers, we should start punctuating along Victorian models, w/commas for emphasis, sometimes between subjects & verbs or just for whimsy, colons where no one'd use them today, and a shockingly free hand w/semi-colons. Not to mention the fantastic :— construction
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · Dec 11
Virginia Woolf is an underrated colon user: bring back colons for things other than lists and time!!
December 11, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Casey
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Just discovered an insane new form of co-intelligence where you briefly share the mind of a great thinker in history and then a portion of their mind travels in yours for the rest of your life. Calling it a "book."
December 11, 2025 at 3:08 AM
Reposted by Casey
paulaflucas.bsky.social
Portal…from this morning’s puddle bothering.
🔵
#OneWalkADay
#MentalHealthMatters
A large circular puddle in a leaf covered woodland path. The blue sky and Autumnal trees reflected in the rain water.
December 10, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Casey
wolvendamien.bsky.social
There's this weird thing in the American Exceptionalist psyche where we get told over & over & over again that our history— The Best History— comes down to Singular Moments™ led by Great Men™— the Revolution, Emancipation, Miners' Strikes Civil Rights— & those moments' resolutions Solved It Forever™
wolvendamien.bsky.social Dr. Damien P. Williams! Look over here! … It's All For You! @wolvendamien.bsky.social · Dec 10
You know in Europe they riot about this kind of thing.
truthout.org Truthout @truthout.org · Dec 9
A new investigation has revealed that grocery delivery service Instacart is using a covert, AI-powered dynamic pricing scheme to charge customers different prices for the same items — potentially costing households over $1,000 more a year.
December 10, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Casey
aletheakontis.com
Stranger Christmas 🎄🌀🙃
December 6, 2025 at 4:03 AM