Francesca Chubb-Confer

visiting assistant prof @oberlincollege; PhD @UChiDivinity | Islam, South Asia, Sufism, Arabic/Persian/Urdu poetry, Bollywood, translation | all views my own

[Francesca Chubb-Confer @fchubbconfer]

Latest from me: "Remnants of Eternal Possibility: Iqbal and Lyric Time in the Ghazal," as part of a special issue I co-edited dedicated to the lyric in South Asia:
https://t.co/T3XIFUSZWB

[Dr Can Erimtan @TheErimtanAngle]

'The cat door in the Karaağalar Quarters of the Harem at Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace, originally built during the Ottoman period to allow palace cats to move freely, has been fully restored.'
https://t.co/r6GYqigEXP

[adam @resurrecti0ns]

genuinely wild that so many people are still trying to do Sokal 2 "JUDITH BUTLER THINKS THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS TRUTH" stuff as if woke academics are more of an issue than uni management blowing millions through incompetence or politicians trying to dismantle the humanities

[Francesca Chubb-Confer @fchubbconfer]

@mkhanpasha @PhilipPanass It's really thought-provoking - we must discuss!

[Val @VK_HM]

Well, he has tenure

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Francesca Chubb-Confer @fchubbconfer]

@amnamirza @JosephLumbard Where else is an American student supposed to learn those languages? They're not offered in the vast majority of undergrad programs. I was lucky with a head start but grad school was where I seriously learned Arabic/Persian/Urdu

[Soleil @soleiljolina]

Microdosing hell by being aware and literate

[Mike Aubrey @michaelgaubrey]

Humanities scholars learning entire languages in order to do their research and engage with the secondary literature are horrified everywhere.

[Paul Schofield @pschofie79]

😬

[Jared Holt @jaredlholt]

It is completely insane that we had two teenagers try their best to do a one-for-one replica of one of the deadliest racist mass shootings in history, and somehow it is not the biggest story in the country right now

[inefficient rhubarb snackowski @snackowska]

lol academic life right now is so absurd. there are no jobs, tenured liberals don't know what year it is, and you're supposed to provide comments about arguments hallucinated by a robot that flies military drones and moonlights as a ghostwriter

[Enezator @Enezator]

They installed machines in Türkiye to feed stray cats, and now some seagulls have learned how to meow hoping they’ll get food too 😭🐈

[N @dearvotion]

Just learned about the existence of WikiRug. There’s a map of regional rug patterns of Iran where clicking on each province directs you to a dedicated page about that particular rug.

[alex peysakhovich @alex_peys]

got a framed copy to hang by the ai team

[Ali A Olomi @aaolomi]

In Islamic and Middle Eastern lore jinn have their own tribes and nations just like humans and some of these nations and tribes make unlikely alliances
https://t.co/dPcOhyy4uT

[inefficient rhubarb snackowski @snackowska]

inside all the hatred for the humanities, there's a lot of misogyny

[Francesca Chubb-Confer @fchubbconfer]

@midwestbimbo @bookpapr *vast majority, sorry!

[Francesca Chubb-Confer @fchubbconfer]

@midwestbimbo @bookpapr Hi internet strangers, just wanted to say I also have both parents deceased (when the best majority of friends my age have both living) so I empathize and I hope you do something nice for yourself this weekend in honor of your moms ❤️

[Gautam Bhatia @gautambhatia88]

At the height of McCarthyism, U of Michigan fired three professors — an event that they later felt so ashamed of that they instituted an annual “intellectual freedom lecture” in their honour, called the The Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom.

[Changez Khan @ajxcav]

A short thread of David Pollack's Vintage posters of Pakistani cities — early 1970s.

1 - Peshawar