D’oh, I figured it out. Well, I figured out a workaround. I realized it was only happening with the images I’ve been messing with today. I was trying to upload 10 at once earlier and they timed out due to my slow net connection. Even uploading one at a time fails now, though the progress bar fills to completion. The images aren’t in the filesystem, and I deleted the dummy stubs from the media browser, but evidently the system remembers them.
I renamed the files, and pesto, uploado.