The arc of history is a foot-long, but it bends towards justice.

So I guess this is also my favorite Bill Gates story.

My favorite Ted Porter story is the time he found an old ranking of all the high school students in the state of Washington, ranked by aptitude and taped it to his office door for several months. Ranked third was a William Gates, carefully underlined by ballpoint pen. 1/2 #histsci

I got a letter from the government the other day I opened and read it it said you get free electricity

BREAKING: Democrat Johnny DuPree has flipped a Republican-held Mississippi Senate district in a special election. DuPree was previously the mayor of Hattiesburg. His win imperils the Mississippi Senate GOP's narrow supermajority. www.mississippifreepress.org/democrat-joh...

Pretty grateful to our featured sticker artist, Ida for her joyful mermaid!

Couldn’t vote today but did just receive 100s of these promotional stickers @emilypawley.bsky.social and I had made for our forthcoming supernova of a collaborative book. If you’re at HSS in a couple weeks, I’ll give you one! Or stick it on you when you’re not looking! #histsci #envhum #envhist

My second science job as a summer undergraduate intern was here working on the IMAGE spacecraft. It went silent in 2005 but then was found again in 2018!

I have a pet theory that flight attendants, who spend their workdays in a state of emotional and physical restraint, fitting all the cups and condiments and passengers into tight spaces, go home and just fling stuff everywhere. 1/3

Woooo, out doing recon for tomorrow’s community art workshop on… panoptic mapmaking?

Back on the Metro, eyes peeled for my Nutella colonel.

Am in DC for a few days for the GSA. Was ambivalent about seeing the city I used to adore so changed. Made and held eye-contact tonight with an USAF officer (LOTS of stripes/badges/flair?) that was riding in one of the sideways seats with the biggest container of Nutella I’ve ever seen next to him.

Before I go dark on Bluesky for a bit (returning to MS), sharing some heartwarming tidbits I collected in LA this week: First, my Doktorvater’s goldfish survived the Palisades fire in his little pond, soot and all. Second, my niece’s school sings Felix Navidad in Mandarin at their holiday pageant.

Heading back to the severed floor/Mississippi today, so doomscrolling all the Bluesky I can for the next several hours.

Already having a tough day so thought I’d cheer myself up by working on archive requests for my Monday visit. Searched “LA civilian defense” in the hopes of finding some information on the siren infrastructure but the first several hits are civilian exclusion orders targeting Japanese Americans.

Everything is terrible and terrifying so instead of finishing my guest lecture slides, I’m trying to write a limerick about it. Any suggestions on words that rhyme epistemology? Yellow-eyed vireo?

Just touched down in ATL and popped open Bluesky for the first time in 12 days - been locked out because Mississippi. What’s been going on? Anything happen?

I’m at a tucked away, very mediocre concourse restaurant where they serve the only chickenless salad (desirable) in the whole airport. They are blasting Boyz II Men and multiple people, servers and patrons, have stopped everything to sing along. ATL is amazing in unexpected ways.

One of the more adorable language hiccups my son used to have was mishearing and misremembering cuttlefish so that he called them snugglefish.

Attended the opening reception for the "IQ: Hva forteller testene?" exhibit at the Univ. of Oslo Historical Museum this evening. Lots of good material on the history of intelligence testing, my favorite being the cheerful diagnostic toys. The opening quotes were a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

An imprecise ranking of the top five things that happened to me today: 1. Waking up in a charmingly restored 1803 Jakstuga on the edge of the forest outside of Stockholm.

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education 1/

EDITOR'S NOTE: "For those of us at the Mississippi Free Press, this is a significant blow. We left Twitter earlier this year for a lot of reasons, and have since made BlueSky our main social media platform (it’s also where we have the most followers)," Ashton Pittman writes.

The best part of Uppsala so far (besides seeing old friends) is discovering that the very serious Güntherska bakery pulled a 300 year old stone out of their facade at street level to install this tiny mouse bakery diorama. I love it so much. #eseh2025

The crux of their argument is that if they're found liable, then the consequences of their own actions that no one forced them to take could ruin them and the rest of their industry that undertakes similar practices. To which I say motherfucker did you never hear about Napster

Gonna repost this every time I hear “Take Five,” this time on the Concourse E lounge piano.

teachers! excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone. take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE against-a-i.com

We're 300 followers away from 70,000. 300 more would be really nice. But you know what would be even better? 300 plus 30,000. Bluesky: help a museum out

In these trying times, an Ode to the Dumpy Bucket Thingy at my Town’s New Splashpad: My favorite thing about my town’s new splashpad is the dumpy bucket thingy. It’s a giant bowl, uncentered on an axis, that fills with water and, when heavy enough, tips over on children eagerly waiting below. 1/

those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this

The 2025 @aaup.org Faculty in the South Survey is live. If you are a professor in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Texas it's for you. Ends 8/29 at 5pm Eastern forms.gle/v7T3BH2w9LXs...

Prairie Chickens Imaginaries paper became a co-authored email thread on music theory & iterative novelty then a zany experimental piece w/Tswana terms & LA sunsets. We did revisions w/track changes OFF & just submitted it. Tenure is nice but "fuck it, it's all burning down anyway" is even more fun.

Working through my feelings on this. Some (historical!) context: I nearly stormed out of a retirement party last week because I got so agitated by a conversation with a grad student about AI.

I’m trying to figure out the right way to say this, because: Look, the CPB closing is devastating, and I don’t in any way want to blow even a wisp of smoke that it isn’t. But twice today, I’ve seen people express how sad they are that all of public television and radio is over. Not true! (1/3)

Go for it. I don't even care any more.

Just had to double-check the spelling of Billy Ray Cyrus' name (the Ray) for a footnote because that is where my "Prairie Chicken Imaginaries" paper has landed. It also opens with a quote from You Nakai on experiment, in case you worried it lacked proper theory.

I'm going to start calling it my privacy meadow. (the goldenrod hasn't even arrived and its already taller than me!)

"Two men freedive. One seeks the hammerhead. The other seeks absolution. They write things on diving slates but erase them before showing the other. Later, they drink whiskey they cannot afford."

The 4-yr old will softly recite lines from Cloudy With a Side of Meatballs while staring at her 10-yr old brother while he drinks his milk. It sends him into a fit of giggles to the point of spitting his milk out all over the table. It’s happened several times now. It’s like a Jedi mind trick.

Wore my Immigrant City FC shirt out and about in my small Southern town for the first time today. A stranger asked me about it and then invited me to a pickup game this afternoon. shop.angelcity.com/collections/...

What if I quit my job and moved to this tiny island off the coast of Queensland and just listened to the wind at dusk?

🚨BREAKING: Cal State LA just moved classes online and let faculty work remotely, not for a storm, not for COVID, but because ICE is in the area. Let that sink in, an entire university is treating immigration enforcement like a public health crisis.

Have seen little blue penguins, takahē, black swans, tui, Eurasian magpies, harriers, & various perching birds. I shout “Shell Duck!” with the wobbly voice of Psyduck right before he explodes in the Detective Pikachu movie every time we see them and only the 10-yr old laughs.

FINALLY. After days and days of drizzle and low clouds and conference-room carpeting and tiny, gluten-free muffins, some:

Jet lag chronicles: Up at 4 am and listening to the kids chitter excitedly about the features of the rental minivan we collected yesterday. “Did you KNOW there’s a button on the INSIDE that opens the door!?” Yeah! YEAH! There is one on my side too! I PRESSED IT!”

Four out of six flights down on this infinite travel day. At least we’re in New Zealand now so close enough for close enough.

In grad school, a friends’ fall-back plan if he failed comps was to open a “porridge bar.” It seemed like a dubious business prospect for LA. But I am currently at the Berlin airport, finishing off a bowl of oatmeal, goat cheese, pear, and little bits of thyme, and I feel pretty frickin’ fortified.

The Berlin Biennale was quietly full of rage. My two favorite pieces at the KW location were "Comedy Club" and the "Walking the Cabbage" pieces, photos below.

Vaccination schedules on the CDC website have already started changing under RFK Jr. So we published a guide to the evidence-based vaccine recommendations in place *before* all 17 members of the advisory panel were abruptly dismissed by the new admin. www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-... 🧪