Miriam Posner
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miriamposner.com
Miriam Posner
@miriamposner.com
14K followers 2.4K following 5.5K posts
Tired person, fighter. Labor, data, DH, obsolete software, database history, etc. Seeing Like a Supply Chain out from Yale UP in fall 2026. Speaking for myself, not my employer.
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miriamposner.com
It must drive them nuts that the corruption possibilities are so penny ante
In April, Mr. McDonald announced "Celebrate America!," a program that includes 250 grants of up to $25,000 for projects relating to 250th anniversary of American independence — a potential total of more than $6 million. Those grants are aimed at organizations. But the endowment's public database shows that Mr. McDonald has already made at least 20 chairman's grants to individual scholars - the only such awards listed in the database, which goes back to 1965.
November 15, 2025 at 4:31 PM
miriamposner.com
Alongside the large awards, Mr. McDonald has also announced plans for hundreds of smaller discretionary "chairman's grants," which can be awarded without scholarly review. Most of those given so far have gone to scholars with ties to conservative or religious institutions. Four of them — including $30,000 for a project called "Meritocracy vs. Equity: The Declaration of Independence in Tension With Critical Race Theory and D.E.I." — were awarded to people whose names have not been revealed.
November 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
miriamposner.com
One of them — $10.4 million to the conservative Jewish educational group Tikvah, for a project aimed at combating antisemitism - was awarded after the scholarly council voted against it, according to five people with direct knowledge of the discussion, who were granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
November 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
miriamposner.com
The agency recently announced what it said were the two largest awards in its history, which together consume nearly 10 percent of its annual budget of $207 million. Both went to handpicked recipients.
November 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
miriamposner.com
Lord, I’d forgotten that the Regents appealed the judges’ orders to release the letter not once but *twice*.
October 14. Judge Rebekah Evenson of the Superior Court of Alameda County orders that the UC Regents must produce the Trump demand letter by October 24. October 14. A UC Office of the President spokesperson states: "The University is committed to being open and transparent about the challenges we face, while maintaining the confidentiality of ongoing proceedings with the federal government." October 20. The UC Regents appeal the decision to the Court of Appeal of the State of California, 1st Appellate District Division Three. October 22. The Court of Appeal of the State of California, 1st Appellate District Division Three rejects the UC Regents' appeal. October 23. The UC Regents appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court. October 24. The California Supreme Court rejects the UC Regents' appeal. October 24. The UC Regents publicly release the Trump demand letter, titled "Resolution Agreement Between the United States of America and UCLA."
November 15, 2025 at 6:47 AM
miriamposner.com
Cool thanks
After Friday's ruling, a spokesperson for the university system, which did not participate in the case, said the system remained "committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university."
November 15, 2025 at 3:17 AM
miriamposner.com
Tears of relief at these bullet points.
To be clear, examples of conditions on the grant or continuance of federal funding that would violate the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs' members would include, but are not limited to: • Requiring the UC to make hiring, firing, or funding decisions on the basis of Plaintiffs' members' protected speech or freedom of assembly. Resung he tend restrict its riculu, scholarship, or research ased on the Detendants' • Restering the a A scien views anal tocia ba interm ional or "anti-American" views and/or "socialize" international students to favored "norms." • Requiring the UC to institute reporting requirements concerning Plaintiffs' protected speech or freedom of assembly. • Requiring the UC to adopt specific definitions of "sex," "male," and "female, or adopt Defendants' favored views as to gender or gender affirming care and disallowing inconsistent speech by its faculty, staff, or students. • Restricting how the UC decides scholarship awards, hiring, or admissions, beyond what current constitutional or statutory law requires.
November 15, 2025 at 1:13 AM
miriamposner.com
From the beginning, we told UC administrators we needed to fight. They treated us like children, too starry-eyed and naive to grasp the reality of our new regime.
(.0. 1 20) The UC has already begun withdrawing support for "risky" speech as a direct result of the Task Force Policy. In the wake of Defendants opening civil rights investigations into the UC, the UC Irvine administration instructed a faculty member not to teach a course on campus politics because "it was risky and would make UCI a target." (Dkt. No. 29-29 1 54.) In another example, UCLA professor and UCLA-FA member Graemen Blair explains that he is part of a team that submitted a proposal in 2024 for a project concerning academic freedom in the context of pro-Palestinian speech. (Dkt. No. 29-4 11 1, 5, 41.) UCLA committed $140,000 in matching funds to the project, with the rest to be covered by a private funder. (Id.) However, after receiving the August 8 Offer, UCLA informed Blair's team on August 20, 2025, that they could no longer endorse the project. (Id. 1141-43.) Without university funding, the project has been scrapped. (Id.) Similarly, UCLA undergraduate associations have submitted an amicus curiae brief describing how UCLA administration has recently required changes to words used in the naming, outreach, and advertisement for the Latinx and Philipinx Graduation events, which have run at UCLA for decades. (Dkt. No. 65-1 at 18.)
November 15, 2025 at 12:43 AM
miriamposner.com
Defendants are ENJOINED and/or STAYED from conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC's agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of Plaintiffs' members under the First Amendment. 5. The "suspensions" (or terminations) of National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Department of Energy (DOE) research grants to UCLA researchers that took place on or around July 30, 2025, and the associated blanket policy of denying any future grants to UCLA, are hereby VACATED and set aside and/or STAYED, and Defendants are ENJOINED and/or STAYED from implementing, instituting, maintaining, or giving any force or effect to them. Any future terminations of federal funding by Defendants meeting the above criteria are ENJOINED, VACATED, and/or STAYED upon issuance. IT IS SO ORDERED. Dated: November 14, 2025 [Rita Lin’s signature] The Honorable Rita F. Lin United States District Court Judge
November 15, 2025 at 12:07 AM
miriamposner.com
Who among us has not asked a convicted pedophile for advice on an extramarital affair
March 16, 2019 at 3:19 p.m. From: Jeffrey Epstein To: Larry Summers shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the mo-torcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh. ••• On March 16, 2019 at 3:08 p.m. Larry Summers wrote: We talked on phone. Then "I can't talk later". Dint think I can talk tomorrow". I said what are you up to. She said "I'm busy". I said awfully coy u are. And then I said. Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming" She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans. I said ok I got to go call me when u feel like it. Tone was not of good feeling. I dint want to be in a gift giving competition while being the friend without benefits.
November 13, 2025 at 5:06 PM
miriamposner.com
USAC's executive team - President Diego Bollo, Contreras and Zhou - said they created the brief because they still wanted the lawsuit to include a student perspective. They added that the brief was fully student-initiated and led. "There are no undergraduate student entities as plaintiffs on the actual lawsuit," Zhou said. "We wanted to find a way to make sure that the judge was able to see the ways in which undergrad students have been impacted, specifically all of these organizations on campus who have been impacted by the cuts, and not just the cuts, but also the way that the pressure on the university has affected organizations as well."
November 8, 2025 at 5:22 PM
miriamposner.com
Say Chan:
The efficacy of such arguments to project and racially “dataify” the Chinese as uniquely virulent sources of moral and physical contamination that put healthy, civilized White natives at risk also turned the Chinese into what historians today describe as the most closely observed, documented, and photographed immigrant group in the United States of the day (PeglerGordon 2006, 2009; Shah 2001).
November 7, 2025 at 6:17 PM
miriamposner.com
This is going to be the most complicated day of all time, but I'm looking forward to the systemwide UC town hall today at 4. We'll be watching at UCLA's Center for the Study of Women from 4 to 5:30. Hang out with other people who GAF about the university. cucfa.solidarity.tech/fight-for-th...
Time Fri, Nov 07, 4:00pm - 5:30pm PST Location Virtual Event Fight for the Future of Higher Education: A CUCFA Systemwide Town Hall Gather with faculty from all 10 UC campuses to discuss: Trump Threats to Research, Teaching, Patient Care Erosion of Shared Governance & Working Conditions How Faculty Associations and CUCFA Can Respond What you can do next Speakers Nick Mitchell, UCSC Feminist Studies and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Chris Hansmann UCD Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies Steve Shoptaw, UCLA Health, Family Medicine/Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences Anayeli Rosete, UCI SAFIRE Walter Leal, UCD Biochemistry Khalid Kadir, UCB Engineering Ussama Makdisi, UCB History
November 7, 2025 at 5:11 PM
miriamposner.com
Librarians continue to be on the front lines of the war against knowledge and humanity, with little help from those in power. From @404media.co www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...
IT'S ABOUT MORE THAN THE BOOKS Last month, a company called the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database announced a new version of a product called Class-Shelf Plus. The software, which is used by school libraries to keep track of which books are in their catalog, added several new features including "Al-driven automation and contextual risk analysis," which includes an Al-powered "sensitive material marker" and a "traffic-light risk ratings" system. Librarians told 404 Media that Al library software like this is just the tip of the iceberg; they are being inundated with new pitches for Al library tech and catalogs are being flooded with Al slop books that they need to wade through. But more broadly, Al maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics. This story was reported with support from the MuckRock Foundation.
November 7, 2025 at 5:04 PM
miriamposner.com
While administrators have been negotiating in secret, faculty and staff have been fighting. It just could not be more clear who gives a shit about the university as an ideal and who doesn’t.
The university system itself did not join that case nor the one that was before Judge Lin on Thursday. But system leaders have spent months in talks with the government about a possible settlement. The system has said little about those negotiations, and it tried unsuccessfully to keep the Trump administration's U.C.L.A. settlement proposal out of view, fighting a public records lawsuit all the way to the California Supreme Court.
November 7, 2025 at 1:10 AM
miriamposner.com
But it was only minutes into a hearing on Thursday before Judge Lin, her voice crackling with anger, began depicting the Trump administration’s methods as potentially lawless and deeply detrimental.
November 7, 2025 at 1:07 AM
miriamposner.com
Pure evil actually
The foundations for The Line's first modules - perhaps the largest piles ever laid by man — are also visible, waiting to support the world's largest occupied building, if it ever arrives. The village of Qayal, which was a few kilometres from the "hidden marina", has been razed. Fifteen members of the Huwaitat tribe who protested against their eviction were sent to prison, some for up to 50 years, and three others were sentenced to death, according to human rights observers.
November 6, 2025 at 8:46 AM
miriamposner.com
Like an iPhone but a city
Two photos: one showing a woman and man seated and mic’d, apparently on some kind of panel or broadcast. The second shows two phones side by side: a boxy Nokia phone alongside a strip of paper depicting a schematic map of a conventional city, and an iPhone alongside a strip of paper with…two linear protrusions. Caption: At a 2017 conference, MBS illustrated his vision for Neom by comparing two phones. A later display at the Neom Museum near The Line shows a Nokia 215 phone next to a traditional city layout and an iPhone next to The Line's vertical layout. © AlArabiyaEnglish/YouTube, Darren Spillett/LinkedIn
November 6, 2025 at 8:40 AM
miriamposner.com
Man don’t bring the poets into this, it’s your own godforsaken mess
Nothing like this had ever been tried before, and some of the Neom team sounded as if their main obstacle was conventional thinking. "I was in a conversation one day with two physicists, quantum physicists," Antoni Vives, then Neom's chief urban development officer, told Discovery. "One of them looks at the other and looks at me, and says: 'you know what, perhaps it's the time of the poets now. We need poets'"
November 6, 2025 at 8:24 AM
miriamposner.com
Oh ok
Qaddumi listened — and the work continued. Yet with an upside-down building, even simple things became complex. "When you flush the toilet, the stuff goes downhill, right?" the architect asked. "We've worked that out," Qaddumi replied, according to the architect. "We're going to have hundreds of shuttle cars running back and forth, picking up the sewage on retractable bridges."
November 6, 2025 at 8:18 AM
miriamposner.com
So many of us at UC are overwhelmed by terrible decisions we had no part of. We're trying to work as our budgets are decimated, our students are threatened, and our values are imperiled. The very best thing we can do for ourselves right now is to come together. cucfa.solidarity.tech/fight-for-th...
Fight for the Future of Higher Ed: A Systemwide Town Hall. Logos of the Council of UC Faculty Association and the AAUP alongside a schematic map of California denoting the locations of UC campuses. Time Fri, Nov 07, 4:00pm - 5:30pm PST Location Virtual Event Fight for the Future of Higher Education: A CUCFA Systemwide Town Hall Gather with faculty from all 10 UC campuses to discuss: Trump Threats to Research, Teaching, Patient Care Erosion of Shared Governance & Working Conditions How Faculty Associations and CUCFA Can Respond What you can do next Part of the AAUP National Day of Action
November 6, 2025 at 12:24 AM
miriamposner.com
Here is what you might say in an email. Please cc [email protected] and consider including your dean and chancellor.
Dear President Milliken, I write to insist on the continued funding of the hiring incentive associated with the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP). This program has demonstrated its efficacy for hiring exceptional scholars over the past 40 years. It is a primary engine for the transformation of the professoriate and knowledge in the UC system. The PPFP is one of the most competitive postdoctoral and hiring incentive programs in North America. It is an open competition that is in alignment with state law and does not use race, gender, national origin, gender or other protected classifications in its review and selection. The hiring incentive linked to the PPFP is a faculty-driven hiring process, open to all fields. More than 400 current faculty members were hired through this program. Nearly 100% have been tenured. Given the demonstrated impact of the hiring incentive on the scholarly reputation of UC, and given that the cost of the incentive represents a tiny fraction of the UC budget, budgetary prerogatives do not seem like a defensible argument for this decision. Cutting the hiring incentive would be an unacceptable concession to the Trump administration's demand letter and is taking place without transparency or consultation with faculty, deans, or other campus leaders. I ask you to halt this action and to consult with faculty and administrators with a long history of not only supporting but also benefiting from this program.
November 5, 2025 at 5:29 PM
miriamposner.com
You can be like, the average person doesn’t know who Kiarostami is, what are they talking about? But film is a visual language that people speak without knowing they’re doing it. You need to know what vocabulary is available.
8:04 • Bluesky Borenstein cited a bevy of influences that run the gamut, from Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and John Cassavetes's Shadows, to pop-y '80s films like Smithereens and Liquid Sky. Carol Reed's classic The Third Man became a key reference for shooting videos that needed to work in both widescreen and vertical video formats-they opted to shoot many videos in the old 4x3 aspect ratio to make things easier, adding, "Like any filmmaker, I have a hate/hate relationship with vertical video," which DiMieri seconds. Borenstein also references the films of Wong Kar-wai and Christopher Doyle's lush, urban cinematography. Then there are the less expected influences, like the Canadian mockumentary series Nirvanna the SUBSCRIBE TO SKIP ADS ADVERTISEMENT CLOSE defector.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:08 PM
miriamposner.com
Exciting candy discovery: matcha White Rabbits
A package of candy. Text on package reads: 大白宠 WHITE RABBIT 100辈苏酵 White Rabbit Matcha Creamy Candy •糖糖果 抹茶 MATCHA 争香山 150도
November 4, 2025 at 4:16 PM
miriamposner.com
Ha ha ha ha ha
The bug is breaking the "X" button to quit Task Manager, preventing the app from shutting down and instead keeping it running in the background. Repeated attempts to open and close the app result in multiple instances that can eat up your CPU and RAM resources.
November 2, 2025 at 4:05 PM