Most Ardently

visit your local library!

they need your support <3

Touch Grass

Lesson 13 got me thinking. It has a lot to do with physicality. Snyder summarises it as follows:

13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

I'd summarise it more like this: Touch Grass.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons

Which lesson would you like to know more about?

Do not obey in advance.

Defend institutions.

Beware the one-party state.

Take responsibility for the face of the world.

Remember professional ethics.

Be wary of paramilitaries.

Be reflective if you must be armed.

Stand out.

Be kind to our language.

Believe in truth.

Investigate.

Make eye contact and small talk.

Practice corporeal politics.

Establish a private life.

Contribute to good causes.

Learn from peers in other countries.

Listen for dangerous words.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

Be a patriot.

Be as courageous as you can.

Snyder, T. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons

Which lesson would you like to know more about?

Do not obey in advance.

Defend institutions.

Beware the one-party state.

Take responsibility for the face of the world.

Remember professional ethics.

Be wary of paramilitaries.

Be reflective if you must be armed.

Stand out.

Be kind to our language.

Believe in truth.

Investigate.

Make eye contact and small talk.

Practice corporeal politics.

Establish a private life.

Contribute to good causes.

Learn from peers in other countries.

Listen for dangerous words.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

Be a patriot.

Be as courageous as you can.

Snyder, T. (2017). On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown.

The Librarian of Congress

Trump fires Librarian of Congress Hayden, the first woman and first African-American to hold the post

"And when you have a free public library in particular," she said, it was an "opportunity center for people all walks of life, and you are giving them the opportunity to make choices on which information, entertainment and inspiration means the most to them".

Choosing what to read in a library that offers the full range of human experience, writing and expression opens up the world to everyone and opens the way to empathy and to each other. Of course, that's not what the current administration in the United States wants.

The group, American Accountability Foundation, accused Hayden and other library leaders of promoting children’s books with "radical" content and literary material authored by Trump opponents.

We know what the political systems are called that ban democratic opponents and what they have to say.

Associated Press. (2025, Mai 9). Trump abruptly fires librarian of Congress in latest purge of government. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/09/trump-congress-librarian-fired

Queer Spawn Point

Spotted in Amsterdam

Hope and hopelessness

Feeling Revolutionary is feeling that our current situation is not enough [...]. Feeling revolutionary opens up the space to imagine a collective escape [...]. Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, [...] is the enactment of a critique function. It is not about announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be.

Duggan, L., & Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Hope and hopelessness: A dialogue. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 19(2), 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700903064946

The slow professor

Academic work is by its nature never done; while flexibility of hours is one of the privileges of our work, it can easily translate into working all the time or feeling that one should.

This is just too true.

We need to take the time to read things that we don’t "have to" read. Just because reading cannot be easily quantified does not undermine its worth. In response to "what did you work on today?" many of us adopt an apologetic tone when we reply, "just some reading."

That pretty much sums up why I've started reading again, what I find personally interesting, and not just what is related to a paper I need to write or a lecture I need to prepare. That's why I'm sharing such a wide range of quotes and literature here.

We do need time to think. We do need time to digest.

Some of the things you read take time to sink in, to become relevant at some point in the future. Or not.

Connected to the imposition of neoliberal ideology on research culture is a dramatic decrease in collegial culture [...]. As academics become more isolated from each other, we are also becoming more compliant as resistance to the corporatization of the academy seems futile.

Both loneliness and belonging are contagious.

Resistance is not futile.

Berg, M., & Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.

A Call for Constructive Engagement

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding. [...]

Signed by so many leaders of colleges and universities, even by some high profile ones such as Yale, Princeton and Brown.

https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement

Glitter

This is the Farbschnitt of a Killer, Bella

Das wäre nett.