Jess Schomberg

@schomj

Librarian, disability, union member 🏳️‍🌈 (they/them)

520 Following1,781 Followers4,893 Posts

Bluesky

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Jess Schomberg@schomj· 17d

Not the nursing type

Orange cat on her side with her legs at odd angles and her head tilted so her chin is pointed at the ceiling, looking at the camera with alert whiskers and her front fangs exposed, next to a cat toy

Jess Schomberg@schomj· 23d

I really enjoyed his collaboration with Cassandra Khaw so am hopeful!

Jess Schomberg@schomj· 25d

Next up for Mission: Read All the Disability Stuff Waiting for Years on Mount TBR before August 18

Jess Schomberg@schomj· 27d

I was wondering why she was taking this long side-track to genealogy (of theory) and this is why. I'm glad I ignored my impatience/instinct to skip over this section

our fundamental need to distinguish good informants: originally, knowledge is what good informants can be relied on to share with us. Stages (1) to (3) in his construction represent the three different components of the good informant: someone who (1) is likely enough in the context to be right about what you want to know, (2) is communicatively open (principally, sincere) in what he tells you, and (3) bears indicator properties so that you can recognize that (1) and (2) are satisfied.
This third condition-the bearing of indicator properties--is what leads an inquirer to identify this or that person as a good informant in the first place. We have already observed that even in the State of Nature this mechanism can be subject to basic prejudices, so that we must expect to find there an original counterpart to the real-life phenomenor of testimonial injustice. Craig's scenario now allows us to add to this the related point that a significant form of the injustice in the State of Nature (as I have elaborated it) occurs when prejudice, manifested in what I have called markers of trustworthiness, leads to a tendency for some groups simply not to be asked for information in the first place. Now this most straightforward of epistemic exclusions--barred entry to the community of informants--is obviously also a crucial feature of the politics of epistemic real life. The exclusion in fact marks a commonplace form of testimonial injustice: those social groups who are subject to identity prejudice and are thereby susceptible to unjust credibility deficit will, by the same token, also tend simply not to be asked to share their thoughts, their judgements, their opinions. (If the word of people like you is generally not taken seriously, people will tend not to ask for it.) This kind of testimonial injustice takes place in silence. It occurs when hearer prejudice does its work in advance.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 13

I was at the bookstore yesterday idly browsing the shelves, saw this, and realized that for the first time in over a decade I am ready to dive deep into vampire lore

The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 12

But for real, having someone explain how this frustrating thing happens in such a matter-of-fact way is so clarifying

We can distinguish two ways in which a prejudicial residue from the collective social imagination may subsist in a subject's social consciousness even while it conflicts with her beliefs. We can capture them respectively under a diachronic and a synchronic aspect. The diachronic case is exemplified by our card-carrying feminist. Her beliefs have moved on, but contents carried in her social imagination have not, so they constitute a residual prejudicial force that continues to shape her judgements and motivations-not unconsciously in any strict, psychoanalytical sense, but without any focused awareness and without her permission, as we might put it. And an example of the synchronic case might be a lifelong committed anti-racist whose patterns of social judgement none the less betray a residue from racist elements that are contained in the collective social imagination. In such a case, the individual subject is unable to filter out prejudice in the atmosphere of social judgement wholly efficiently, so that a residue of atmospheric prejudice impinges on his own patterns of judgement, again without his permission. Residual prejudice, whether diachronic or synchronic in form, is the sort of prejudice that will bring about the most surreptitious and psychologically subtle forms of testimonial injustice.
I take it that an awareness of how such prejudice can, despite ourselves, shape our credibility judgements by stealth lends support to the idea that various degrees of testimonial injustice happen all the time. As Judith Shklar points out, the history of philosophy leads us to think falsely of justice as the norm and injustice as the aberration:
There is a normal way of thinking about justice, which Aristotle did not invent but certainly codified and forever imprinted upon all our minds. This normal model of justice does not ignore injustice but it does tend to reduce it to a prelude to or a rejection and breakdown of justice, as if injustice were a surprising abnormality.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 10

I never know what I am getting myself into before starting a book of theory, but this one is a delight. I can understand now why the wikipedia article on this topic is so clear.

Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing by Miranda Fricker

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 9

Why is this the sort of result I get whenever I try to buy anything online these days? Worse than useless, it feels like someone is throwing sand at my face. Some vulgar combination of malice and incompetence.

Screenshot of search results at Target for "dichotomous earth" show 616 results. The first one is strawberry and mango-flavored melty loops, which I think is some kind of snack food. Similarly, the second result is breakfast cookies with a picture of Sesame Street's Elmo on the front of the package

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 8

Today is a baby's 7th birthday

An orange cat sleeping on a gray blanket

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 2

Oh. Well, this explains why so many people have observed the similarities between ABA and conversion therapy

Dawson (2004) reminds us that Lovaas's earliest forays into applying ABA technologies for the purposes of behavior change were not targeted solely at autistic children; they were also initially targeted at so-called feminine boys.
UCLA's Feminine Boys Project (FBP) preceded the Young Autism Project (YAP) by several years, though there was some overlap in dates of publications generated from the respective projects. O. I. Lovaas served as principal investigator for both, although much of the FBP was conducted with his protégé George Rekers, who pursued the line of inquiry as his doctoral dissertation work. In later years, Lovaas distanced himself from this early work (a further indication of his rhetorical, media, branding, and political savvy--the political fallout was toxic), but the intervention designs were nearly identical. The FBP targeted for replacement undesired behaviors (that is, so-called feminine behaviors) with desired behaviors (that is, so-called masculine behaviors) in young boys. As with the YAP, both contingent reinforcement (e.g., praise and food) and contingent punishment (e.g., slaps or spanks) were systematically deployed, in both projects with the stated aim of making the young subjects indistinguishable" from their "normal" peers.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 2

me: eh, I am not in the mood for horror-suspense, I want something lighter also me: currently debating between these two

Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming by László Krasnahorkai and Blindness by José Saramago

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jul 1

Wait, we're torturing kids and the evidence in support of this legalized child abuse is this weak?

Yet another decade has passed, and still Smith et al. (2000) remains the only experimental treatment-effect study of ABA intervention with young autistic children to have random assignment to treatment and control groups (with a sample size of 15 participants, and results reporting a 13% efficacy rate-a far cry from replicating Lovaas's 47%). However, that additional decade did yield the most comprehensive (positivist) meta-analysis to date of studies researching the effectiveness of nonpharmacological intervention for young autistic children (Sandbank et al., 2020), evaluating summary effects across seven different types of early intervention models. Sandbank et al. not only tracked reported effects, but also analyzed the included studies by prespecified quality indicators. In short, their analysis found that
when study quality indicators were not taken into account, significant positive effects were found for behavioral, developmental, and NDBI intervention types: ... [however, when effect size estimation was limited to studies with randomized controlled trial (RCT) designs, evidence of positive summary effects existed only for developmental and NDBI [naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention] intervention types. (p. 1)

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jun 30

Hope and change (cure) are easily, enthusiastically marketable but stopping to ask what we're doing gets buried in academic analysis at best

Kephart (1998), herself a parent of a young autistic child, theorized around her own experiences with her son's labeling and educational interventions by deftly posing the critical questions that others at the time did not:
What, in the end, are you fighting for: Normal? Is normal possible? Can it be defined? Is it best achieved by holing up in the offices of therapists in special classrooms, in isolated exercises, in simulating living, while everyday "normal" happens casually on the other side of the wall? And is normal superior to what the child inherently is, to what he aspires to, fights to become, every second of his day?
In effect, Kephart named the invisible ideological position of privilege or which the construct of recovery [to normalcy] tacitly rests, a position thar Thomson (1997) designated "the normate".
Kephart's (1998) question, "What, in the end, are you fighting for? Normal?", exposed and destabilized the ideological assumption that normalcy is the presumed end that we are "fighting for," and the corollary presumption that normal is "superior to what the child inherently is, to what he aspires to, fights to become, every second of his day". In so doing, Kephart disrupted the rhetoric around recovery [to normalcy] in ABA dis- course and created spaces for engagement with alternative conceptualizations of hope for young autistic children, embedded in alternative ideologies, alternative values, and alternative practices. But Kephart's voice was not amplified by corporate media; her disruption of ABA discourse was but a momentary blip in the path to the hegemonic institutionalization of the cultural logic of ntervention that took hold in the 1990s. She invoked no broader cultural discourse or rhetoric of authority, legitimacy, or truth to bolster her incisive laims. She deployed no broader marketing or messaging strategy. And thus her rhetorical disruption was largely (and regrettably) forgotten.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jun 22

I think I am going to like this book. From the opening to Broderick's The Autism Industrial Complex

Acknowledgements
This book is perhaps aptly described as what the Great Lakes Feminist Geography Collective calls "slow scholarship" (Mountz et al., 2015) which may be an understatement, as it represents the present culmination of he gradual evolution of my own thinking and scholarship on the cultura. politics of autism over the course of approximately two decades. I published everal pieces of scholarship advancing this line of thinking over the years in what I understood to be nascent, emergent, and partial forms, as the demands of the neoliberal university require not deep, complex, or comprehensive, but rather, frequent, regular, and visible publication.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Jun 6

Whoever decided to put this cover art on this book is brilliant. It is perfect.

The book is Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling, featuring a menacing and disorienting illustration of a cat

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Apr 28

www.theroot.com/white-suprem...?

White Supremacy? Black Farmers in Historic Miss. Town Are Suddenly Losing Their Jobs to White South Africans
Thanks to U.S. visa programs, white South Africans are taking jobs from Black residents in Mississippi—and making more money.

By

Angela Wilson

Published

April 28, 2026

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Mar 27

So many screams in such a small cat

An orange cat walking toward the camera with tail lifted straight up into the air and held at a slight tilt at the top

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Mar 27

The text of the full call does not fit in the alt text, so I am also linking to the full description: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Call for editorial board members
We have received a substantial increase in archives-related submissions over the past year. We are currently seeking editorial board members with archival experience and knowledge of current conversations in archives. We invite archivists who are able to meet deadlines, participate in a thoughtful manner in the peer review process, and creatively contribute to the journal to apply.

About Lead Pipe + Vision
In the Library with the Lead Pipe is an open access, open peer-reviewed journal founded and run by a team of library workers working in various types of GLAM environments. Lead Pipe believes libraries and library workers can change the world for the better. We improve libraries, archives, professional organizations, and our communities of practice by exploring new ideas, starting conversations, documenting our concerns, and arguing for solutions. We encourage creative thinking, envelope-pushing, and constructive criticism.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Mar 15

@marikapea.bsky.social i'm about to start this book i found on a list of NYRB translations and thought of you!

The Door by Magda Szabó. A sticker on the cover says it was one of the 10 best books of 2015 according to New York Times Book Review

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Mar 11

For the Betty fans

An orange cat on a cream blanket, with her front paws outstretched to make biscuits in the blanket, her ears at alert, and her eyes half open

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Mar 10

I mean sub in the US for Germany... the question that I keep wondering is, who is going to play the role of Great Britain this time around (highly doubtful it'll be the UK)

This reactionary, totalitarian civilization, after having triumphed in a series of countries, finally found, in Nazi Germany, the power that was thought to be capable of drawing the final consequences. Its victory would mean the final consolidation of totalitarianism in the world. All its characteristics would be exasperated to the greatest degree, and progressive forces would be condemned for long years to the role of
simple opposition.
The traditional arrogance and intolerance of the German military classes can give us an idea of what the character of their dominance would have been like, after a victorious war. Victorious Germans might even concede five years of generosity towards other European peoples, formally respecting their territories and their political institutions, in this way satisfying the false sentiment of patriotism of those who consider the colours of the boundary fence, and the nationality of the politicians in the forefront; and instead it is the ratio
of power and the effective content of state organs, that warrant attention. However camouflaged, the reality is always the same: a new division of humanity into Spartans and Athenians.
Even a compromise solution between the two sides in battle would be one more step ahead for totalitarianism. All those countries which had eluded Germany’s grasp would be forced to adopt its same forms of political organization, in order to be adequately prepared for the next war.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Feb 27

@marccold.bsky.social for next time I am on a novella kick!

I am holding the book First Love by Ivan Turgenev

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Feb 22

How things are going in MN since the "drawdown" began

Sahan's multimedia journalist, Dymanh
Chhoun, joined me for the trips, and
together we talked with several residents
and activists who look out for federa
immigration enforcement activity in the
area. They told us that their neighborhoods
have changed. Federal agents often show
up when it's still dark outside. around
midnight or between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m
- almost every day. They park outside the
entrances of the mobile home parks, in
nearby gas stations or behind local
businesses, to stav out of view. At a few
mobile home parks, residents said federa
agents are patrolling the school bus stops,
presumably waiting to run into parents

accompanying their children.

Many of these neighborhoods are secluded,
lying on the outskirts of suburbs, and they
often have just one or two roadways leading
into the park. As a result, immigration
agents can easily choke off residents
access to exits

These unique challenges make it harder for volunteers to quickly arrive at the scene

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Feb 14

Indulging myself with books and snacks today

The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter volume 6
City of Others by Jared Poon
Don't Let the Forest in by Drews

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Feb 11

And this is the end of my allowed social media time for today. I will leave you with a Betty

And orange cat standing on a bed with one front paw lifted as she takes a step forward

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Dec 31

@jesbattis.bsky.social I think theres's a chance you've already read this, but if not I wanted to share it with you. A lot of the stories are about poetry (writing it and teaching it)

Photo of me holding the book Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Dec 9

Makes me think of this

Originally posted on X by Zack Brown (@LuminanceBloom)

ZIZEK: that Al will be the death of
learning & so on; to this, I say NO! My student brings me their essay, which has been written by Al, & plug it into my grading Al, & we are free! While the 'learning' happens, our superego satisfied, we are free now to learn whatever we want.

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Dec 4

This was great, really glad I picked it up. Felt like a mix of ghost stories and fairy tales

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Dec 1

Starting with the smallest, a chapbook I picked up during one of my periodic forays into indie press books

Jess Schomberg@schomj· Dec 1

Ok time to get started on my half-decade backlog of short story anthologies