@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Zeb_Larson

@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us

Hello! I'm a former #academic who still considers himself a #historian. While I've left #academia behind, I still work as a #writer, mostly of essays and history pieces. Some of my pieces can be found in Jacobin, Teen Vogue, Smithsonian, and Belt. My PhD is in #history, and I studied the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. Today, I write about a variety of topics. When I can, I listen to #music and play #games.

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Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Help hold me accountable, friends of Mastodon: I swear that I’m not doing anymore career conference panels. It doesn’t matter if the conference is free (because not having to pay to donate my time isn’t actually a perk of any kind). It doesn’t matter if I like the people organizing it. It especially doesn’t matter if they flatter me. No more. 2024 is the year I rid myself of this needless obligation.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@inquiline @seachanger These are salient points, and a good reminder that perspective matters here a lot. I never had a great conference experience (even the one where I got legitimately useful feedback), but I was always a grad student or an adjunct. They were expensive and a good reminder of my own career precarity. Had I gotten a TT job? Maybe I would have been fonder of them.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@inquiline @seachanger Oh it’s fine, it’s a good reminder that these don’t have to be all bad, and what makes them bad is also wrapped up closely in what’s hurting the profession as a whole.

jordinn, to random

Left hand: Wow, I seriously applaud people setting limits on the number of interviews they're willing to endure for a single position in tech

Right hand: You should see what happens to ministers and academics lol lmao

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@jordinn As somebody who has done both, it’s mind-melting.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@jordinn The most fascinating part of all is when an academic job search fails. A job search at U of Toronto-Scarborough failed the last year I was on the market because despite getting 250 applications, they “couldn’t find a good match based on the skill sets of the applicants.”

I mean, tech has dumb stuff: I’ve done a six-hour kata, which was good learning but a huge waste of time.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@Cassandra @jordinn Tech does this; it appropriates stuff like “scrum.” Kata in this instance is closer to its original usage, which is supposed to be a practice or routine but for coding. Increasingly though it’s also a technical exercise as part of a hiring process.

Zeb_Larson, to history
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

I went to give a talk tonight (something I rarely do anymore and was starting to miss) about the of mental healthcare. And as I was driving home, it hit me how much working in that sector radicalized me. I’d always been a progressive Democrat, but three years in community mental health really disabused me of pretty much all my faith that society as currently organized can provide care to marginalized people.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

People beat up on Reagan both for what he pursued as governor and as president, and rightly so. But Dukakis slashed state hospital appropriations, too. This can’t be solely understood in terms of bad-guy Republicans; it’s a much more complicated interplay.

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Students half-ass the writing, teachers half-ass the grading, and society half-asses the idea of a public good. https://www.axios.com/2024/03/06/ai-tools-teachers-chatgpt-writable

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

If you want “weird” cities, they need to be cheap. Do you know why Portland was weird? It was cheaper than Seattle and San Fran. You could devote yourself to unicycle riding or making the perfect Turkish coffee because it was so cheap to live there.

(Columbus managed to go straight from unknown to expensive while skipping “weird.” It’s a sociological marvel.)

exchgr, to random
@exchgr@mastodon.world avatar

it is not only correct, but also necessary to criticize biden. the fascist threat does not exonerate him

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@exchgr It seems straightforward to me at least that everything good we got from Biden and the Dems came as a result of the intense pressure and demands he found himself under in 2020. Want an exciting candidate? Ask them to act boldly. Criticizing him frankly makes him more electable, at least if he responds

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

@exchgr Though I do enjoy this fantasy mainstream libs inhabit where I have any kind of sway over independents and conservative-leaning Dems. Obviously the builder’s unions like to consult with me before casting their vote

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

One of my weird historiographical hills that I will die on is how poorly congressional records are saved. There is no requirement that they save their papers, and there are no requirements about how they make them accessible. It is honestly kind of a crisis; it allows our elected representatives near-complete control over their history and the history of legislative governance in this country.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

As an example, I was looking at the papers of Wisconsin senator William Proxmire a few years ago. Proxmire was in the Senate for decades, but all told, he had just ~180 boxes. That might sound like a lot, but it’s not. Imagine the sheer volume of correspondence, briefings, memoranda, and paraphernalia a senator’s office generates in a year. Daniel Moynihan had a similar tenure and had something like 3,000.

And all of Proxmire’s history, or most of it? Gone.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

It happens in more vexatious ways, too. I really wanted to look at Richard Lugar’s papers in grad school, but they weren’t scheduled to be opened until ten years after the death of his wife. Moynihan’s widow has to give permission to look at his papers; Mark Hatfield’s wife only recently opened up his papers.

And then lots of people don’t do anything with them at all.

Zeb_Larson,
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Imagine how much worse it’s going to get with the advent of e-mail. We’re about to enter an information black hole where correspondence can casually disappear and there’s no archival recourse that you can take. If you really want to think about holding Congress accountable, part of that is not letting members write their own histories.

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Well, it’s possible that McConnell is just dying (his health has been poor for a long time now), but also, the impossibility of his job has been made clear. He’s dead to the Trump Republicans, he’s unable to deal with the House GOP (for reason #1), and the Democrats absolutely loathe him. He’s a power broker without any power; he’d be screwed regardless of who wins the presidency this year. The last several years have been a humiliation for him — nothing better is on the horizon.

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Vice had its issues -- it was notoriously bad in the way it treated freelancers. But watching this is still devastating in its own way.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/23/media/vice-buzzfeed-layoffs-digital-revolution/index.html

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

Yeet yourself into a vat of rancid mayonnaise. How’s that for your LLM?

Zeb_Larson, to random
@Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

“Biden could resign”

But he won’t. Believe me, I wish we had a better candidate but there’s a type of online leftist who thinks they manifest better politics into existence by posting about it. This isn’t 1968, Biden isn’t Lyndon Johnson, Gaza isn’t Vietnam (and yes, I believe it’s genocide), and if you have a wish from a genie just use it to gut the Supreme Court.

seachanger, to random
@seachanger@alaskan.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    Zeb_Larson,
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    @seachanger Yeah, T.S. Eliot didn’t know shit, February is the cruelest month.

    Zeb_Larson,
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    @CindyWeinstein Damn that Alfred J. Prufrock and his love song. Too prescient if you ask me.

    Zeb_Larson, to history
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    The fish pepper is one of those stories that seems too good to be true: an almost-disappeared foodstuff is brought back from the brink and makes an incredible recovery. It doesn't hurt that it's fun to cook with.

    Anyway, I wrote about its here. A fun story.

    https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240216-the-us-pepper-that-was-nearly-lost

    Zeb_Larson, to music
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    I'm rarely proud of my own writing; this piece is an exception. I'm proud of this one. It''s a topic I'd wanted to write about for a long time and it rested on a partnership with an incarcerated author, David Annarelli. I couldn't have written it without him. This is part of a series, one of which will be by him.

    Please share; I'd like to get this one out in the world, along with its siblings.

    https://scalawagmagazine.org/2023/06/southern-prison-music/

    Zeb_Larson, to random
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna bring back "hep"

    Impossible_PhD, to random
    @Impossible_PhD@hachyderm.io avatar

    Okay, so a few days ago, I made several posts about how I was pretty upset about Mastodon and the way a good chunk of the Fedi culture convulses from time to time.

    Anyway, I'm dorking around on Bluesky this morning waiting for the caffeine to come online and I stumble across a post--now a fucking website--full of signs made as a direct response to the culture on the Fediverse I was talking about.

    And they're absolutely damning.

    https://files.selfawaresoup.com/need-not-reply/

    An information message to be used to manage replies. It reads: DO NOT REPLY TO DENY MY LIVED EXPERIENCE. ANTWORTEN SIE NICHT, UM MEINE ERLEBNISSE ZU VERLEUGNEN. NO RESPONDER PARA NEGAR MI EXPERIENCIA VIVIDA NE PAS RÉPONDRE POUR NIER MON EXPÉRIENCE VÉCU
    An informational message to manage replies. It reads: DO NOT REPLY TO TELL ME WHY A THING I LIKE IS BAD ANTWORTEN SIE NICHT, UM MIR ZU SAGEN, WARUM EINE SACHE, DIE ICH GEFÄLLT, SCHLECHT IST. NO RESPONDAN PARA DECIRME PORQUE ALGO QUE ME GUSTA ES MALO. NE RÉPONDEZ PAS POUR ME DIRE POURQUOI UNE CHOSE QUE J'AIME EST MAUVAISE.

    Zeb_Larson,
    @Zeb_Larson@zirk.us avatar

    @Impossible_PhD As much as these replies have been a part of just about every community I’ve seen online, they’re so normalized here. Twitter is a cesspool and I don’t miss it, but I’ve been tagged by multiple people here to call me an idiot or mock me for something I’ve said — one of them had never spoken to me before, they’d just found something I’d written, disagreed with it, and tagged me out of nowhere. “Being an earnest asshole” is a weirdly normalized thing in this space.

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