Escher cake Vanilla cake, vanilla bean buttercream, one layer of salted chocolate buttercream filling, one layer of salted caramel buttercream filling, fondant (modeling chocolate was too sticky for the cookie cutter)

They just made us move all our modules over to "Blackboard Ultra"; I fully expect to need to port it to another platform because of course I will. Much preferred when I could have handcrafted html / basic Jekyll site hosted on GitHub.

‘Priority courses’, give me strength. Working class kids deserve to study classics and history and art as much as anyone else.

University senior leadership and employer body representatives (UCEA, UUK) should be in the media saying things like this every single day. Where are they?

It was revelatory when I first encountered this idea in a book about the Buddhist precepts. Why am I tensing up imagining a political conversation with my aunt who lives on another continent? Or assuming a loved on is going to respond to some bad news in the worst possible way?

bro is that your gyre? shit is widening my man

IT IS TIME.

Strike starts TODAY!!! Branch members will be picketing from 8 to 11 today, tomorrow, and Wednesday at UP's west, south, and north entrance and Jubilee's main entrance on Derby road. Come show your support! #StopTheCuts #SaveHE

I genuinely cannot believe that Ezra Klein said we should run pro-life candidates in Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri; three states that recently held abortion referendums where the pro-choice side won!

When your tiny neighbourhood bookshop has a collection from your neighbourhood poet who you met on a picket line in a blizzard, you buy a copy.

The best chapter of "Abundance" is the one on research funding. Nobody really knows what works, but the approach of "more detailed pre-approval by funding bodies" has had a fair go and really failed to deliver the goods. And that's research that is.

Finally getting around to reading @essj.bsky.social's Darryl after seeing I think @jsellenberg.bsky.social talk about it ages ago? Anyway, it's great, Darryl's voice is :chef's kiss:, and *of course* he's a Lebowski guy. It's made me pull Berryman's Dream Songs down off my shelf.

When people ask, "Right before the Republic crumbled, who was doing the best 19th century literary pun stencils?" remember my name.

On Blonk Street in Sheffield city centre where several hundred people have gathered to defend a hotel against a planned demonstration by anti-immigration protesters. The anti-immigration protesters are due to be here at 1pm.

"faced with an equation that won't come out" Reading this phrase brought to mind the line "the only verb math students know is equals". Similarly, it's common to view an equation (and all maths) as a puzzle, a test, something set to be solved, rather than just a sentence, a statement.

I experienced a minor malfunction. I'm okay now.

Last day of summer vibes.

Now I'm curious. Do you know other examples of papers where, similarly, the authors disagree on some point, and argue their opposite positions separately? /End

Give me your favorite Treachery of Images derivative meme. I’ll start.

Is this a haiku? The syllables do their job But something fails them.

I think if Britain colonised your country of origin you should get free BBC iplayer.

When I went to uni to become a teacher, developing lesson plans and schemes of work was a key skill for us to learn, not because premade lesson plans didn't exist, but because *it's how you think through your lessons*. If you're just 'delivering AI content' you're not *thinking*. 😔

This one is special as my great grandparents were potato farmers in ND (though on the opposite side of the state)

This is what I'm hearing too. A total failure of public policy all the more staggering for having been totally predicted and predictable. A disaster.

AB B♭A

We did not suffer through Baz Luhrmann at No.1 for this

depressing that she has the bad luck to be starting her career when her country is trying to both destroy higher ed and make life unlivable for people like her. i hope she gets out safely

A lot of the whinging about staff not being relatable is pure racism and sexism. It's about policing conformity with stereotypes and refusing to accept that a student could learn from someone who's unlike them, and it can get in the sodding sea.

Teaching combinatorics in the fall. Out of curiosity, anybody know anything written about the use of the phrase "Stars and Bars" for the counting technique vs. the confederate flag?

seriously institutions could save so much money and get far better outcomes by just giving every researcher a moderately sized block of discretionary research funding (some institutions know and do this and it shows)

As a teacher, nothing saves me more time than teacher autonomy, smaller class sizes, and being treated like a professional The basics aren't flashy and don't create colorful graphs. But new tech often undermines all of the above and just adds more layers of bureaucracy (so, more time)

In a study of professors, women got 378 new work requests over 4 weeks vs 118 for men. Women spent more time on service, advising & teaching; men on research. Orgs should track who is taking extra duties & ensure they are rewarded and distributed fairly. www.forbes.com/sites/kimels...

Sad about this -- I know little about New College except it was very different, and that William Thurston went there. I have a vague memory of reading him talking about his time there and what it meant to him, but couldn't find it after a quick search. Does anybody know, or am I making this up?

It's no wonder babies cry so much: they're trapped in a game of QWOP until they get good at it.

Spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about what it would be like, from a 1st person perspective, to be an American patriot and I keep coming back to one fundamental conclusion: The poem The New Colossus goes so hard and regularly moves me to tears

People always ask me : “Cristi, how do you manage parenting a baby while going up for tenure?” It’s easy. The secret is *flow-based-scheduling*. Here are its three core strategies for new academic parents: Sleep when the baby sleeps Cry when the baby cries Publish when the baby publishes

"White House senior policy strategist May Mailman... said that Penn set a positive tone for the negotiations... [She] mentioned the 'childlike behavior + intransigence' of other uni's that have attempted to negotiate with the fed gov't, adding that Penn could be rewarded for showing 'goodwill'"

The New York Times might want to read up on when it's appropriate to use anonymous sources, according to (checks notes) The New York Times, from an article dated 6/11/25.

heaven might just be a porch swing, a breeze, and nothing left to prove.

"I had thought that the mission of the university was research, teaching, and service, and that the staff's role was to help fulfill that mission, not obstruct it." numberlandadventures.blogspot.com/2025/07/reta...

Sorry but referencing Hamilton and Trump is always going to give me traumatic flashbacks of Miranda on SNL after the Access Hollywood tape...

Empathy is also one powerful way to recognise others as human, as not different fundamentally to oneself, not trusting our empathy responses and sticking to ideology undermines our capacity to build bridges of solidarity. This is terrifying. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Too close to home here at Sheffield, where our great Archaeology department has been closed.

Indiana Jones will be played by a rotating cast of three adjuncts who answer to two different associate deans

Late to the sign meme, but loved this bit of guerilla activism at an intersection close to @sheffielduni.bsky.social that really needs a pedestrian crossing. Just walked by it this morning and the sign has been taken down.

I was recently introduced to the work of Ursula Franklin, a Canadian physicist, metallurgist, and activist. If you like reading about the intersection of technology, power, and justice, this is a great and insightful read by @kissane.bsky.social: www.wrecka.ge/ursulas-list/

So, here it is. Thanks to a new state law that was NEVER DEBATED, Indiana University has committed itself to abolishing majors in African-American/African Diaspora Studies: American Studies; Art History; French; Italian; Religious Studies etc. DOZENS of majors. www.ipm.org/news-section...

Seeing two uses "mushroom" as a verb within a few minutes got me curious. Evidently it goes back to 1700s but became much more common 1920-1960; mushroom clouds as opposed to mushrooms growing fast? But it seems to start too early for that... Disappointed this usage isn't from Super Mario Bros.

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban