If I ever run into Tony Hawk in the wild, I'm going to say: “Hey... are you?? Do you know who you look like? Do people ever say you look just like... ...Ralph Macchio?"

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

Each morning I wake up, take a hot shower, make coffee, and open my laptop to Al Jazeera, hoping that it will NOT be this news. Goddamnit.

I see the military industrial complex continues to make wealthy contractors even more wealthy, while the service members get treated to... this. In the army they say that shit rolls downhill. But there are no hills in the ocean, so it rolls in every direction but up as the ship hits each new wave.

Going to make a hot dog sandwich.

Because in 2012, a US District Court ruled that New Jersey common law postmortem publicity rights endure for no more than 50 years after a person’s death. Because Einstein died in 1955, the Court’s ruling means that Einstein’s publicity rights are now in the public domain. cdas.com/einstein-pub...

Happy Engineers Week to all who celebrate. "Whether you host a classroom visit, volunteer with your state society, mentor a student, or share your engineering story online, your participation helps amplify the message that engineering changes lives."

Sweet Jesus, this is a nightmare

National Margarita Day? In this economy? #NationalMargaritaDay

♫ 🎶 "Packed like lemmings Into shiny metal boxes..." ♫ We've all seen lemmings like that, right?

Locked out of the house so I’m sitting on the porch waiting for whoever gets home next, and it’s… really relaxing? Unexpectedly very relaxing.

Student taking a test: “Hey Sterlace, how do you make a calculator stop rounding the answers?” Me: “I love math jokes. I don’t know, how do you make a calculator stop rounding the answers?”

Canonically, the most important piece of classical music ever written is Tchaikovsky‘s 1812 overture.

I want everybody prepared to bum-rush Bondi when the Dow is down. At a moment's notice, gang.

Do I even want to read that article in The Atlantic, "Stop Meeting Students Where They Are"? I'm guessing No, I do not. The professors who are discussing it on social media have accepted a dichotomy of "challenge your students" vs "meet students where they are", but it's not an either/or situation.

apropos of nothing, sunburst is the most overrated guitar finish.

Let me get this straight, the Waymo cars were full of Greek warriors waiting to attack at night?

"Just asking questions" very clearly means asking questions but not listening to answers.

My friends, a word you may find useful. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/k...

Basically, I am a sucker for a fun course title. The novel structure course I'm designing for our MFA program is called "How Novel"

Conspiracy theories are fanfic for nonfiction. Fannonfic, if you will.

The IT help desk on-hold music is extremely relaxing, so there is that.

Nietzsche sucks.

The view from W Beverly and Fayetteville, in downtown Staunton, VA. It looks beautiful, but it’s a bit treacherous.

Still can't believe they immediately put the officers who killed Pretti back in the field. Even if the shooting had been justified (it wasn't), it's just incredibly callous and reckless -- to the public, but also to the officers themselves. Just a sociopathic dearth of humanity.

This is an escalation from "officer feared for his life" (which I sometimes could not tell whether it was a lie or a truth that should not have been true). I'm not sure I understand the purpose of lying this way when there is so much video. Why don't they stick with the more familiar lie?

Gotta update my bio to include "climate insurrectionist".

In our department meeting, it was asked whether we should have a departmental BlueSky account.

I see someone has turned on the Winter Storm Hype Machine.

No new pictures. Where are you at mentally?

I regret that I will not be at the 2026 Winter Meeting for @aapthq.bsky.social, the conference is always informative, uplifting, and populated by such excellent colleagues. #AAPTWM26

Anybody got the odds that Elon has actually read "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein, 1961) ? #Grok

If you put a blue pill under a red light, or a red pill under a blue light, you get a black pill. Do with this what you will.

Friends, I am initially skeptical but also (at a deeper level) joyous about this prediction for my near future.

The people I know who are defending this clown are the exact same people who have told me that the best solution to America's occasional massacre of schoolchildren is to "harden all school perimeters". The. Exact. Same. People.

How is it possible that we still can't get the Apple Watch face to be Dick Tracy themed?

Hot Take: In Die Hard, Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson doesn't really do anything bad. He's certainly not a villain, barely an antagonist. He comes across as an inept putz largely because we know things he does not.

It took until today for me to realize that Kermit is left handed.

“A Christmas Carol” (1999 film) with Patrick Stewart and Richard Grant! #WhatTheDickens

If this plan advances one iota, I’m going to have to scrub my work history to say I spent 1993-1999 unemployed.

If this plan advances one iota, I’m going to have to scrub my work history to say I spent 1993-1999 unemployed.

Many people believe that frankincense was one of the gifts brought by the wise men but actually Frankincense *was* the wise man - the gift was Frankincense's monster.

There should have been a “Law & Order: Internal Affairs”. Why didn’t we get that?

I just looked up the time for tomorrow's JMU vs Oregon game and it's listed as 7:30 PM and I'm pretty sure the fact that the time is given in eastern time zone and not pacific time zone means the fix is in for JMU.

You know where this kind of discussion across differing viewpoints *actually* happens on a daily basis? In university classrooms across the country.

I'm sorry but what the hell is this?

(I clear my throat and smile at the interview panel) "Yes, I am inexperienced and unqualified. Is that a good thing?"

I used to have a friend who was fixated on the phrase "Western civilization" and one day around 2012 I asked whether he would rather see future USA adhere to the Constitution while becoming racially Asian, or eschew the Constitution while remaining majority white, and that's how I lost that friend.