You should go see One Battle After Another.

As a scholar of communication and cognition, I will say that this is in fact a very very stupid thing to do, unless your goal is to shut down any chance of persuasion and re-education. And if that is your goal, what exactly is your end game? Irreconcilable hatred? That won't save us.

We need this kind of campaigning in the US. And that's only going to be possible if we finally give up on our two-party system. It's holding us hostage as entrenched powers drag our country rightward into hate.

I have this lovely poem pinned to the noticeboard on the corridor outside my office.

Blue-tinted headlights don't just mess with night vision, they are down right dangerous for folks with photosensitivity (and, as a consequence, everyone else around them). I'm lucky that my epilepsy is very well-controlled with medicine. But even with that, these lights can trigger migraines.

Spot on: "Adopting nativist discourse and policies does not win back far-right voters. It leads to losses for centrist and leftwing parties. Moreover, it raises the salience of the topic and the expectations of the government, which will always fall short" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

So I recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, this is a deeply unimpressive thing. But... I finally learned how to use a sewing machine, and made this over-engineered drawstring bag as my first project. Making things is fun, especially when you get to do it in a super supportive makerspace 😌

"I want a battle plan. Yet if Overshoot lacks such a plan, it nonetheless fully describes the theater of war. "... one of the most important books about climate change in the canon." In advance of Andreas Malm and Wim Carton’s forthcoming book, Genevieve Guenther revisits their first volume:

"This might seem like a drastic accusation for such small infractions. But indulging in the familiar can habituate us away from exploring new ideas. The result can be the death of liberal democratic institutions – slowly, then all at once."

When killing people for being homeless is more conceivable than just giving people housing, where can one even start the conversation? Chat Pile, please: youtu.be/sER0FzJO-c0?...

Catching up on writing (part 1) A May Day post, a little late for Labor Day. In a better world though, perhaps every day would be celebrating us workers, and this post would be right on time. outsidemywindow.org/2025/05/04/m...

If a strange being of light had appeared on the trail to tell me "so, big news, you're actually dead, and this is the afterlife", I think that would have been easier to accept than the fact that I was seeing this view, here on earth, just a 1.5 hour drive from my apartment. Viva la #Cascadia 🌲☁️🗻☁️🌲

Our cat is a confirmed kleptotherm. We thought she loved us, always curling up on our laps... And then we got her a weight-activated heating pad, thus rendering our fleshy inconveniently fidgety laps fully obsolete.

📢Call for papers: The 8th International Conference on Ecolinguistics will take place from 9th to 11th July 2026 in Rennes, France...ICE-8 aims to provide a dynamic and stimulating space for sharing ecolinguistic research and practices. #ecolinguistics

We got to play our new climate metaphor card game at this year's Researching and Applying Metaphor conference! Thank you @raammetaphor.bsky.social for yet another awesome conference, and all you awesome participants for joining the fun ☺️ Free print & play version coming soon!

@textdiscourse.bsky.social Scholman, M., & Laparle, S. (2025). Can gestures speak louder than words? The effect of gestural discourse markers on discourse expectations. Discourse Processes, 62(6–7). doi.org/10.1080/0163...

I'm not a "bouquet" person, but I will say that this has been an unexpectedly nice perk of my partner working on a flower farm. Side note: really hoping dahlias dry in an interesting and semi-stable way. I know beauty is ephemeral or whatever, but still.

Taylor Dock Boardwalk in Bellingham, WA. My phone decided to match my eyesight in blurriness somehow, which I find strangely beautiful. #cascadia

Insurance agent: You're fully covered and can choose any shop you want! Me: Great! How about this well-regarded family-owned business? Agent: 😬 How about one of these two shite mega-corporations? Me: 🤦... Can I get reimbursed for my actual choice? Agent: I can't tell you that. But you can try ☺️

Not a ski lift or mountaintop chalet in sight. My goddess did I miss this wilderness. #cascades

A Not-Rothko (in the spirit of @richardmortimer.bsky.social ) Driving West through North Dakota. The Badlands just beginning to introduce themselves.

✨ New publication ✨ "The devil is in the gestures: Multimodal metaphors in preaching" with the wonderful Bruna Louzada. Open access in Multimodality & Society Take away: televangelists are really effective gesturers, for better or worse. doi.org/10.1177/2634...

I’m happy to see Prof @veronikakoller.bsky.social, Dr Jessica Aiston, Dr @alexiconartist.bsky.social & Dr Mark McGlashan challenging both Ofcom and The Guardian’s portrayal of the manosphere as benign. You can read their letter here: tinyurl.com/mtktjcrb

@cadaad.bsky.social @cadaad-journal.bsky.social any climate-concerned CDA folks planning to come to RaAM this year? Due to, well, world circumstances, we're looking for a couple of more voices to join our panel. If you're interested, please let me know! 🌿🌞

Ah yes, study by white man says that fear of misogyny is overblown. Holy crap @theguardian.com what is this?

Quite possibly my last academic conference, and I think it's gonna be a good one. 🌿🌞

Um, Netherlands... what?

Well, here I am, grading 50 AI generated student papers while fascism spreads, genocide continues, and our climate collapses. But at least my tiny cactus is really going all out with this flower. Thank you, tiny cactus.

This postcard from @gothic-sway.bsky.social has been on my fridge for years and yet I JUST noticed how funny it is. Yay syntactic ambiguities! If I were still teaching syntax and semantics, I'd definitely sneak this on a slide to remind my students how (charmingly) lame I am.

In addition to making me coffee every single morning, my husband @arablelands.bsky.social also makes heady experimental ambient music. There is a new album. It is good. You should listen 🌿😌 arablelands.bandcamp.com/album/drifti...

Apologies for not answering emails or doing any other form of work. My cat has mandated a mental health day.

It seems the phrase "toxic masculinity" is actually quite literal. Typical western masculine behaviors result in higher fossil fuel use (y'know all those big boy steaks and super trucks)

Sometimes when I'm not writing spicy blogs or doing public art projects, I'm doing "serious" work on hand gestures in discourse. Weird right? Here's our latest article. Pretty fun. Plus it pushes back on our written language bias in linguistics. So the spice is still there! doi.org/10.1080/0163...

Well, yes, this is precisely what their banned word list was designed to do. There's people they don't want in science, researching things that puts white male supremacy into question. Disproportionately affecting women, ethnic minorities, and folks with disabilities is the whole goddamn point.

Homelessness is solved by giving people homes. It's not radical. You know what is? Violently sweeping the streets, stealing the few possessions of the most vulnerable, and criminalizing people because the system failed them. Radically inhumane and ineffective. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I'm seeing a trend in academia where ethics boards and publishers are requiring positive consent ("opt-in") from content creators to use *publicly available* data. There are important ethical considerations when using just about any data. But making opt-in a blanket policy is really dangerous. 1/

I watched The Ascent yesterday, a shockingly bleak depiction of the terror inflicted by Nazi Germany at the Eastern Front. Videos of ICE raids flashed in my mind. We have incredibly moving historical depictions. I want to see them coupled with discussions of what is happening now. Next door.

Every time I feel bad about not doing "enough" at my job, I try to remember how crazy it is that any of us are doing anything remotely like "business as usual" right now. And then, weirdly, I feel a bit better for a moment. And then I feel worse.

83 teachers working for a decade at the national average salary (~$72k/year) would *still* not hit the cost of one F/A-18 Super Hornet resting at the bottom of the Red Sea.

Your daily reminder that the U.S. Postal SERVICE is a service that is designed to benefit taxpayers and not a business that should be expected to turn a profit.

Heck yes. Awesome thread. AI-cheating is a symptom of much deeper systemic issues in academia and society more broadly (neoliberalism, credentialism, meritocracy...) Trying to "solve" AI is a distraction from addressing the real problems that will continue to eat away at what is left of academia.

In a small park in #Tilburg stands a strange brick structure with a hole right in the center, creating a window onto the park's shallow pond. The municipality is now collecting comments on renovations for this park. There's a QR code and a survey. But what if they did something more creative? 🧵1/

🚨 Cool new project alert 🚨 WE- you, me, everyone- need to work together to get important science messages out to people. 4 artists & 3 scientists collab'd on these posters. We hope YOU will put them out in your community. Each poster comes w/info about each topic. Get 'em Squidfacts.bigcartel.com

As a big fan of parallelisms and em dashes, the idea of having to consciously change my human style to ensure I seem "human" to others is horrifying. The process maybe could be considered a case of post-human "schismogenesis" though, which is interesting I guess. # Intellectualizing my despair

Universities keep doing this. They have always done this. It's a massive mistake, & they should stop doing it & defend ALL the disciplines to the public. Look around. The case for more, not less, liberal arts research & teaching is stronger than ever. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

During a quick venture in the Swiss Alps, I was charmed and disturbed by this barn's smile. (It's made of skulls and jaw bones, which is both meta and metal)

These are rhetorical questions by the way. We know why there are diminishingly few meaningful jobs. Because finding meaning in your labor is an empowering thing. So empowering that it is dangerous to the systems that rely on all that inequality, consumerism, and ecocide.

I just want a job that I believe would still exist in a world that isn't defined by inequality, consumerism, and ecocide. Is that really so much to ask? Why does such a thing seem like a unicorn-level exception and not the default? #BullshitJobs

While Musk tries to control every aspect of his workers' lives by bringing back company towns, let's focus on imagining something different. We can only resist their control if we can envision alternatives to it. open.substack.com/pub/metaphor...

While Musk tries to control every aspect of his workers' lives by bringing back company towns, let's focus on imagining something different. We can only resist their control if we can envision alternatives to it. open.substack.com/pub/metaphor...