Working from home proving more stressful than I feel is necessary

I had a dream last night that my alma mater sent out a fundraising email to turn their dining hall into a casino...

What would I like to see? A strategic effort by academics in American Studies and so-called "Western civ" to submit an overwhelming number of applications to NEH that focus on issues related to race, ethnicity, marginality, sexuality, and everything else deemed "DEI" that are IN these exact fields.

Do not ruin your CV with this nonesense.

one of the ~3 TT jobs in music studies this year mandated in the contract that all instruction be conducted through Canvas

there are too many discourses right now put some back

St. John's University's president says that he can't bear the burden of dealing with unions, so he's not going to recognize our unions anymore. We've been a unionized faculty since 1970. On Wed 2/25, we're rallying to say Hands Off St. John's Faculty. Join us! bit.ly/HandsOffSJU225 @aaup.org

Is the president mocking the U.S. women’s hockey team on a celebratory call with the men’s team going to attract even an iota of the sustained handwringing that the idea of trans athletes disadvantaging women’s sports has gotten

As a society, we have leaned so far into the "we should only fund education if it leads to jobs" philosophy, that we have effectively eliminated the idea that school is for learning. Truly, at this juncture, "what even is the fucking point?" can't be overstated enough.

I'm sorry, what?

"Is this learning?"

One of the reasons I am ditching Canvas when I return from sabbatical.

NEW: Meta’s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools don’t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...

Massive missed opportunity for a newsletter that’s just “what is everyone going on about on Bluesky today” Neat little summary, 300 words, I can read it first thing in the morning and be saved 30 minutes of trying to peel back the layers of meta-commentary to get at whatever kicked it all off

🌸🌸🌸

I cannot emphasize this enough: The AI doomer narrative (it’s going to wake up and kill us all) is, whether its adherents intend it or not, pure marketing for AI companies It’s one reason their CEOs have even, on occasion, leaned into it

In response to the very complicated situation that happened at the BAFTAs, it's important to center the voices of those with the overlapping identities involved. Because intersectionality is useful, y'all!

this just in from new york city: we’re hearing that mayor mamdani just signed an executive order making it illegal to NOT stand at your window and fold your arms and say “wow, it’s really coming down out there”

Bluesky is not the commons. Twitter is not the commons. You can’t have a privately held commons. That’s not what words mean

A few days ago, a friend asked me to make a FB group for our friend circle planning a tea party. I made the group and invited six people. SIX PEOPLE. It's for a tea party, at someone's house. ... wait for it ... (AI slop post 1/ ?)

thinking about how Savannah Guthrie had to cancel her trip to work the Olympics because of her mom’s kidnapping but the guy who heads up the investigative body handling the case was posting pictures of himself in the US hockey locker room today lol

Provocative? This sounds dangerous. “With a provocative new proposal, an AI company has offered regulators a way to let a broad swath of potentially risky AI devices flood the market… “You run the risk of, proverbially, a Trojan horse,” said oncologist Ravi Parikh”

A gif that sums up the Twitter discourse perfectly.

Not for nothing, but the women didn’t party with Kash Patel after they won. 🥇💅🏼

This actually reminds me of one of my most hated high school movie tropes. The trope where all the weirdos secretly wanted to be in with the cool kids? We didn't.

What? We're doing this again? There will always be people telling you to stay on Twitter, keep your WaPo subscription, keep reading Substack, watch CBS News. Preserve the status quo. You're free to do that. But you're also free to not. You (and we) can, will, and already are building something new

I don't let my social media platforms define what kind of loser I am

I know you know, but in case you forgot since the last time this Discourse happened: They do not care about Bluesky’s intellectual diversity. They care that denying the fragile lil hothouse flowers from the other place the attention they feel entitled to makes them feel bad

every time the X vs. Bluesky discourse comes up the conversation eventually gets here and i'm amazed that it finds a way to continue afterwards

Savannah Guthrie’s mother not at the bottom of that bottle.

This is so important. In the end, all communication & creative endeavor is about the exchange between living beings; it's process, not merely a static output. Even beautiful words, from a computer, offer nothing. (Except, of course, for the many instances when it's stolen from a human.)

Waiting for the blizzard.

Nothing makes me more suspicious of another faculty member than them proposing we create an AI hub.

My 20-year-old is the same. He's super-unimpressed by any assignments he gets from his uni professors that involve A.I., and vocally irritated that he has to have something so "stupid" essentially interfering with his education.

My 19-year old is militantly anti-AI. And it has nothing to do with how I feel about it. She came to this on her own.

say what you will about AI, it’s an absolute godsend for professors who hate their students & also teaching generally

WOWEE

More states should do this. See below!!!!!!

"El Paso's airport is closed for ten days." "No, wait, it's open now." "TSA PreCheck is suspended." "No, wait, it's back up now."

Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization

as far as i can tell “bio hacking” is just a goofy term for giving yourself some combination of an eating disorder and a drug addiction

UF restricted professors from volunteering for post-tenure review because too many were getting the highest evaluation

People born in the 2000s will never understand a nation once so innocent that an ice skater kneecapping another ice skater sent us into an existential crisis.

"no longer be accepting AI art, including on bottles and pump clips, in order to try to protect local artists from losing out on work." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

He is a Nazi and I grew up with This Exact Type of Guy in central Maine in the 1990s/2000s. He disgusts me. Maine, he'll be Fetterman but worse.

"Many of us who work at universities, not just NYU, have watched in confusion and horror at the way our administrations have approached generative AI and its integration into the systems that we use to teach." AFT has said AI must be a mandatory subject of bargaining.

And yet it’s even more dumb: Both hospital ships are in dry-dock in Alabama, so they won’t be arriving anytime soon. This is a weird distraction from the Danes medically evacuating a sick US sailor from a US Navy nuclear sub yesterday 9 miles from Nuuk. What was a sub doing nine miles from Nuuk?

National Historic Sites are America’s open classrooms—places where people from every zip code stand on ground that holds stories of our dead. They help Americans and visitors understand who we are and how we became that way. time.com/7380219/hist...

This is also true of the universities, law firms, and media orgs that settled with Trump. They gave away their integrity and their rights—and got what in return? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/b...

Just remember, all those TSA folks are working and not getting paid. It's not their fault. Be nice.