Update: please don’t ask me why we now have 3 power company trucks and a private electrician joining the group. Sigh….

This is not hard. Artists are not responsible for ensuring the Kennedy Center remains relevant and successful. The center’s board is responsible for that, in a fiduciary way. All of this energy being directed at artists should be re-directed at the board.

2025 was a shitshow but at least we got gay hockey.

yeah, I’m not saying I’m totally infallible on this, but I think my filter for detecting LLM writing has become pretty damn sharp

The amount of white dudes who have shot up schools is not insignificant. Had this been a shooter and the daycare workers didn’t react the way they did?

“This year’s flu vaccine has proved an imperfect match to the currently circulating strains. New shots, based on mRNA technology, would have one day enabled us to avoid this kind of misfire. But the nation’s leaders have imperiled that future with the decisions they made this year.”

*THE CLAWWWW*

I wonder if @aaup.org has thoughts on how faculty should respond. We are required to have canvas pages at my university. I find this all so exhausting. I just want to teach. I don’t want to have to think about this.

Like Chinese women don’t have enough reasons already to stop messing with the men lol

2) I don’t like the term “crusadercore” because it plays with generally benign aesthetics (cottagecore, castlecore, etc) and thereby normalizes this kind of violent bigoted nostalgia underlying the obsession with the crusades. It also so papers over the longer far right history of its uses

A little over a week since the big "tree fall" incident, we finally have people coming today to cut up and haul away the tree, the insurance person came yesterday, and tomorrow the electrician and internet people are coming. Still waiting on the fence guy to call us back. Phew...adulting!

I love this Radiohead song

coming soon to a classroom near me: “class with a printed coursepack” brought to you by the same people (me) behind this fall’s runaway success, “seminar with books”

When my oldest kid was in the PICU years ago, I saw and overheard Cameron Diaz visiting the kid in the room next door to us. She was very awesome and kind.

Microplastics are here to stay; that's why we need to eat them responsibly in the classroom

Mamdani will be sworn in in the station that inspired the Turtles lair in TMNT 2: The Secret Of The Ooze

2/ Now if only business professors and engineers, provosts and VPs of marketing, understood this. We might get somewhere.

There is no more “state of the humanities” as such. There is no condition in which the humanities are under attack in which the whole university is not under attack...We are all humanists now. /1

How Cameroon Fought to Save Its Malaria Program After the U.S. Cut Critical Fund By @stephanienolen.bsky.social Photographs by Arlette Bashizi Gift link!

I love this for us*. *Socialist tile freaks

This is New England's version of the Louvre heist. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

I'm a firm believer that this liminal period between the holidays and New Year's is how we're supposed to live. It's peak existence. May the word "efficiency" die in 2026 and all its horrible relatives "innovating" to solve the perceived problems of rest, joy, creativity, and humanity.

One of my students this semester opined (without any prompting from me) that people who use AI to do their assignments are only cheating themselves.

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science

I'm not a lawyer, but

The last house we helped clean out literally had bags and bins of new sheets and towels - high quality 100% cotton. Most with tags and receipts. Never used. Beautiful ceramic plate sets, still new. Use the nice things!

Did you get something really *nice* for Christmas? Are you saving it? STOP Eat it. Slather yourself in it. Spray it on a random wfh Tuesday. Use it next time you have a meal. Make up an occasion and use it. Whatever it is don't hoard it until it's near its use by date or too precious.

All of the top-10 books borrowed through the public library app Libby were written by women. And Kristin Hannah's The Women was the top check-out in many library system around the country. n.pr/49tGkyq

ROCKET-POWERED RAINBOW WHALE

That’s a cat

I can pet them.

I think a lot about how King Henry VIII planned this elaborate, expensive tomb to be buried in, but then nobody followed up on it when he died. And now he’s interred under a simple marble slab.

“The case is the first positive test in Cook County since 1964, and the first in Illinois since 1994, according to the department… Thirteen people who had contact with the dog have not shown symptoms and are being given preventative treatment, according to the county.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

To put a finer point on it, the 1918 flu came approximately 30 years after the confirmation of germ theory (if you mark it by Koch’s postulates). Modern medicine was in its infancy.

The link to request street plowing on Philly 311’s online portal became “inoperable and experienced technical difficulties” during Friday’s ice and sleet storm.

How I’m walking out of 2025

RIP Claudia Cardinale. Much like Robert Redford, she was a rare case of a beautiful performer with a filmography full of bangers who did NOT become right-wing later in life. Here she is punching fascist Brigitte Bardot in the face in Les Pétroleuses (1971).

Read Jim's whole thread! I also want to add some historical context. During the 1918 pandemic, there was so much confusion because many scientists still thought that a bacteria, not a virus caused the flu (because, as Jim notes, we couldn't even see viruses under a microscope yet).

rip brigitte bardot, our entire culture owes a debt to her pioneering example of being hot and racist

"controversial" lol. The words people use to whitewash and euphemize hate. www.france24.com/en/france/20...

Couple next to me on a first coffee date. She showed him a pic of her “books to read”pile. He said he doesn’t read. Immediate mood change. Dude, you’re toast.

“It found that 22% of families with children said they had to reduce portion sizes for their kids' meals. Additionally, 14% were forced to "deprive children of some meals," apple.news/A109vtvqHQne...

Someone asked for less birds so they got BLOCKED !!! 2026 will be filled with birds !!!!

Increase in productivity since 1979: 87% Increase in hourly pay since 1979: 32% Just so happens that ~25% of workers were unionized in 1979. Today? 10%. As unions declined, the super-rich have taken a larger share of wealth generated by labor. We must build back union power.

Adam Raine’s life hurtled toward tragedy soon after he began talking with ChatGPT about homework. Analysis of his ChatGPT account shows how the chatbot became a confidant as he planned to end his life.

Gotta love the anonymous accounts who think that they are entitled to *both* (1) dictate how someone else posts, and (2) consume journalism for free.

Man, this. Also poorly trained counselors. My brothers counsels very smart kids from poor backgrounds and told me that many don’t apply to places like Duke and Chicago because they google sticker price, laugh to themselves, and move on without understanding they aren’t gonna pay anything near that.

control panel of the day #HCI

"Covid is a good thing. It's a way of overcrowding that got out of hand. . . . When 5 million people have died, then nature will regain its rights." — Bridget Bardot

The 'kin' of ‘napkin’ means "little." ‘Nap’ comes from ‘nape,' which means “tablecloth.” So a napkin is a little tablecloth. 10/10, no notes.