Goodnight, all. May we all know moments of peace and sun-warmed bliss like this adorable ocean potato I saw today.

okay AI controversy aside, just talking as a nerd for a second: this is such a cool paper

That’s quite the board, but the University of Austin president being part of it is really 🧑‍🍳💋

Are people able to put 2+2 together here with several prominent Democrats only able to say “what are we, North Korea?” every 24 hours?

I'll be honest, I was not sure if it was "AI" or a real photoshop job.

For something that will have all the ambience of the Wichita Marriott's conference center and wedding space

I think I shared this before, once a student complained about my teaching b/c I said country X, (his homeland, it turned out), was known for falsifying statistics, so international orgs kept them separate from global totals. That time the country was the PRC, next time it’ll likely be the US 😂 😭

Native American glass always takes me happy places. The beautiful beaded flat bag is by iah q, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Above it is a porcupine by Heather Johnston (Unangan (Aleut) / Alutiiq). The two glass cacti on the window sill are by Robert "Spooner" Marcus, San Juan Pueblo (Ohkay-Owingeh).

I have been doing this for USDA data and their webpages too - the Climate Smart Partnership site was down for a while for example when they went after the program and is now back.

Since our pawpaw harvest was a bit underwhelming this season (one fruit, our first since we planted the trees 5 years ago), we were pretty psyched to find these at the farmers market in Iowa City today. They smell divine btw

None of these people are serious and worth of their influential positions and they should not be treated a such.

So I got an email - out of the blue - from a person in a much more consequential position I am, misspelling my name and letting me know that they and their co-author wrote about this but never published the work b/c they got bored with it. That was the whole email. Please senior ppl do not do this.

FOLKS! share this big story with your friends and family off bluesky too! can’t assume they’ll see it otherwise

trump is working real hard at making a share-of-the-pie, not a size-of-the-pie, world.

This is going to be terrible in the short term for international students and their families, but also for US universities whose attractiveness is linked to the training opportunities the OPT allows. Long term, yes, devastating for innovation in both the private and public sectors.

Dutch late night TV has its take

I had never really thought about the fact that The Lord of the Rings is the 500,000+ word version of “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” but here’s the explanation.

One time I heard Ruth Wilson Gilmore make the point that “racial capitalism” is redundant as all capitalism is racial & never has that been clearer than watching all these tech moguls & university presidents & media conglomerates & journalists fall over themselves to promote white nationalism.

The fossil fuel industry is behind most of the climate disinformation you see and hear today. Charlie Kirk was no exception.

This is giving strong “we are all trying to find the guy who did this” vibes

One thing I learned in almost 30 years of work in US ag policy is that people self censoring their scholarship & doing work within the parameters of what they think big ag will accept resulted in a world where nobody knows how to think meaningfully about alternative choices & argues for them. My 2¢.

Memories and The Music of the Night on repeat. Busty ladies barely dressed. Crass lily white comedy a la Benny Hill. Basically Berlusconi TV with even more plastic surgery, botox and Turkey hair.

ah, well

Robert Redford talking about how the Algerian War led him to interrogate his own understanding of the United States of America.

The UCLA chancellor makes almost $1 million a year - a cut from his previous salary at the University of Miami, over $1.6 million. These are grotesque sums of money that have nothing to do with any meaning of the word "value" brought by these upper administrators' work.

The headline of this article is becoming a theme of the higher ed movement and the anti-authoritarian movement in general: rank-and-file folks are forging ahead of our nominal "leaders."

I particularly like that Sardinia, my homeland, is the center that all the radii start from. I guess I get to eat from all regions then.

I think about this ALL. THE. TIME, hence my pinned post.

If you're around IC and a water person, this may interest you. Waters of the United States: A Conversation with Royal Gardner and Silvia Secchi at Prairie Lights as part of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature Book Festival This is a reading of Prof. Gardner's WOTUS book, in conversation with me.

And just like that, crime stats go down.

Feeling a tiny bit of schadenfreude here for the owners of these farms, a tremendous amount of sorrow for the farm workers and their families and disapproval for the reporter who fails to note that trump got rid of the Farm Labor Survey used to set H-2A wages, another sign of our absurd ag policy*

Perhaps I am missing something but I think we are getting closer to when the people who only care about having a larger size of a smaller and whiter pie have a bit of a convo with the people who profit from having ever bigger pies. [policy implications ensue]

at the center of the efforts to destroy civil society in russia, hungary, georgia and elsewhere is the stigmatization, harassment, & criminalization of NGOs. that's what this is about, a full-on assault on democratic debate & freedoms. this is not hyperbole. it's right here.

A mainstream outlet finally does more than repeat the official BS statement from ICE about the shooting of Silvero Villegas-Gonzalez. This man's death should be a national scandal. Grateful for indy journalists who questioned the official narrative that corporate outlets mindlessly echoed last week.

Bonus: Join the largest faculty union in the United States, @cfaunited.bsky.social

NEWS On the heels of Lisa Cook's victory in the D.C. Circuit, Reuters knocks down another foundation of the Trump admin's mortgage fraud claims. The property tax authority over Cook's Michigan home found “no reason to believe” she broke the rules, per the wire. www.reuters.com/world/us/no-...

It is entirely fitting and proper that Charlie Kirk’s admirers are honoring his beliefs about free speech by devoting hours to getting people fired for saying the wrong things about him.

As the footprint of the US empire shrinks, amidst a breathtakingly fast realignment of global trade and geopolitics, it is heartbreaking to see that the first victims of USian imperialism will undoubtedly bear the brunt of its violent death throes.

Me seeing “go birds” trend in my timeline

I have seen this SO MANY TIMES in my communications with non profits. They want a short term “win” most often meaningless or counterproductive so they can show the funders they have “results” fast. We all need to re-think metrics of success when it comes to grand challenges like food and energy.

Meanwhile in Korean media there is clarity that Trump directed this raid out of spite following his Oval Office meeting with the ROK President, who pushed back aggressively on Trump's praise for the North Korean dictator. They're right. US media have no clue of what's going on.

and this is why the arts matter

Almost seems like something college could be good for apnews.com/article/gree...

Perfect illustration of the real state of cancel culture at U.S. universities.

idk if you've seen this south korean editorial that ran a few days ago. google translate version scorched my eyebrows www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion...

I'd amend this to include all the big ag orgs that enthusiastically support trump and generally go along with his mercantilist policies b/c they think conventional farmers just get their money back in the trade wars - which they did (and more) in the first term, but that's not sustainable long term.

This is a great idea! 🧪 laist.com/news/educati...