paginate posts on admin page

This is what ended up solving it (I’ll include the relevant parts)

    $total = wp_count_posts()->publish;
    $perpage = 10;
    $curpage = isset( $_GET['pagenum'] ) ? intval($_GET['pagenum']) : 1;

    global $post;
        $args = array(
    'post_type'         => 'post',
    'post_status'       => 'publish',
    'order'             => 'DESC',
    'orderby'           => 'date',
    'posts_per_page'    => $perpage,
    'offset'            => $perpage*($curpage-1)
    );

$pages = ceil($total/$perpage);
$dash_posts = get_posts( $args );

handles the query, then

    $pagin = array();
for( $i = 1; $i <= $pages; $i++ ) {
    $url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] . "&pagenum=$i";
    $link = "<li><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/37577/$url">$i</a></li>";
    if ($curpage != $i) $link = str_replace( '~', '', $link );
    $pagin[] = $link;
}
echo '<div id="blgs_post_loader"><ul>'. implode( '', $pagin ) .'</ul></div>';

took care of the pagination itself. For whatever reason, the standard “paged” variable doesn’t fire correctly on the admin side.