In grad school, I had this thought that different online political communities rely on routinized arguments and memes that privilege particular feelings through very specific discursive moves. 🧵

Imagine how different commencement speeches would be if Frost just styled his words differently: I shall be saying this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: 'tWo RoAdS DiVeRgEd aNd I-- I ToOk tHe oNe lEsS tRaVeLeD bY, ANd ThAt HaS mAdE aLl ThE dIfFeReNcE.'

Apropos of nothing, I think one of the most interesting classes I've ever heard about was an elective argumentation class with Maria Gigante where students read self help books to catalogue arguments and argumentative strategies that make it so the author's untrained advice is perceived as authority

I'm making a flyer to a DSA Halloween party drag show to support two of our candidates for common council in Ithaca, and the theme is going to be "the red scare" and this is my collaged design so far

I've had conversations with students about why they turn to AI for research writing, knowing that the outputs are not trustworthy or engaging. The most honest answer I have gotten is that it allows a low-effort response to what someone is asking them, so they can stop worrying about not responding.

I have been doing a lot of deep thinking about what a rhetorical scheme is, what a grammatical construction is, why these are not the same thing, but how they are theories of language use that focus on a similar interaction, albeit most often at different scales. I think I have ideas.

I made this hot take in the late 2010s after listening to a visiting philosopher tell his audience that BLM showed that the youths were demanding change. All true and agreeable but why is this analytic philosophy?

Reading Chinese feels more like I am reading a story. Why is that?

Ohio State just advised all staff and students not to attend the SACNAS (Society for the advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) annual meeting of 6000+ scientists -- which is in Columbus, OH this year! -- saying it may be exclusionary, even though it is open to all.

I find it so weird that the Right constantly justifies their threats of violence with the second amendment but when someone says that trans people should be able to defend themselves, they get flagged for promoting violence. This is peak hypocrisy and it's driving me insane.

"Is your blue the same as my blue? We asked ChatGPT and the results blew away the scientific community." Why are you asking a text generator about qualia? What exactly would you think it would be able to show you that we wouldn't know? I just... What?

I don't know why we even talk to each other when we can just feed past conversations into an LLM and ask for it to write future conversations that we can read and evaluate.

America’s two parties are just different managers of the same capitalist enterprise

It probably wouldn’t be safe to publish right now, but @vtobin.bsky.social and @subcontrarian.bsky.social have an unpublished paper on the tabloid reaction to Hilary Mantel’s piece on the royals that's relevant right now

I once thought there were no objective moral truths. Over time, I became persuaded that there are self-evident truths, axioms of ethics, that provide an objective foundation for morality. Recognising this was a turning point in my thinking. Credit: The Institute of Art and Ideas, 2024

Everything about this. He's a selfish clown. I don't wish ill, but I do wish he and all of his followers would kindly step down and let people who are more competent and less selfish take over because their ignorance is killing people and driving the rest of us insane.

I don't know what I would do if I didn't have my dog here. Everything is so bleak. Everyone is so malicious. Just try to be a better person. It's not hard. Figure out who to help and help them. Forgive if you can. If you can't, maintain your boundaries. But work towards helping people. It's not hard

I think a lot of the terror of the modern age can be understood by the fact that the Internet accelerated the development of the worst type of person, the "Anti-Intellectual Nerd."

Is active listening a real thing, or is it just performative and interruptive back channeling?

Donald Trump believes intelligence is the result of genetics and rich people are smart. Poor people are not smart because of bad genetics. People who threaten his money are also evil. But those people are also usually poor, and thus have bad genetics. This is how poor people are evil and subhuman.

I just... What? What is the source of anti-Semitism?

The Art of the Deal

one of the world's top cancer scientists, who works for Harvard, is at risk of deportation to Russia where she might be killed for criticizing Putin, because she allegedly failed to disclose carrying frog embryos at the border. it's upending American medical research: prospect.org/health/2025-...

Today was my class where we talked about labor abuse in tech and why labor unions are both on the rise and demonized by CEOs and investors. This is a conversation that undergrads in STEM need to hear before they graduate and likely won't from their professors.

Don’t forget to say please and thank you folks!

Me: Oh cool, what do you study? People at this conference: I guess I kind of look at the whole idea of ...

How can attention to language help us to resist, mitigate, or adapt to the changing educational dynamics of our writing classrooms? Join the discussion on Friday from 3:30pm-4:30pm in Meeting Room 347 for the LLW Standing Group Meeting. #4c25

Sometimes when I'm feeling down and defeated, I just start playing the Zero theme song from Megaman X in my head. Dun dunduh Din duhduh Den dunununununu Dun dunuh Din dunuh

Is Trump going to execute someone on live television by the time he is done with his first year, this is what's running through my head.

What happens to Spiderman's webs after he's done slinging? How bad for the environment are these webs? Can we say for sure that the rise of superheroes is not the cause of climate change? We need to go after the real culprits.