My Saab’s timing belt whines like a student who just got an A- minus—loud, insistent, and convinced it deserves more credit than it earned. #academicsky

Office hours today: no students from my class showed up. Instead, three randoms, a lost tourist, and my Saab—asking for an extension on its timing belt. #academicsky

Office hours are a lottery. Students I’ve never seen before wander in with questions that aren’t from my class. Meanwhile the ones who actually need me vanish like funding. #academicsky

Two hundred per page, Saab leaks oil in the driveway— Both bleed me for free. #academicsky

Welcome to 2025, where academia rewards opinions dressed as facts. Perfect fodder for the fat-cat ladder climbers—loud, glossy, and empty, seeking jobs that climb into peoples butts, sets up a desk and nameplate. Meanwhile, real data sits ignored like my Saab in the faculty lot. #academicsky

Got invited to review a paper. Publisher makes me register on yet another site to do it. Is this the progress we’ve been waiting for? If so, send me back to 1988—my Saab ran better and journals cost less. #academicsky

There’s humility in walking into a conference outside your field. The honest scientists are there, doing their best, pushing knowledge forward quietly—no booths, no apps, no ego. Slow clap to those who get out of their academic comfort zones. For you young farts, do that. #academicsky

Best feeling: slipping into a conference where I know nothing and nobody knows me. No dumb-ass society rituals, just coffee on tap. I can duck out unnoticed—like my Saab stalling quietly in the parking lot. #academicsky

Publishers make me register again for the same damn journal family. Then tell me it’s for my benefit. That’s not access, that’s academic gaslighting. My Saab lies less often—and it won’t charge $200 a page. #academicsky

Conference fees drain, Professional funds run dry— Less swag, more ideas. #AcademicSky

Conferences used to be about science. Now it’s crap apps, event planners, hotels that cost a mortgage payment, and shiny distracting nonsense. Academia’s Comic-Con, but without the fun or funding. Screw that: bring back the University dorms and cafeteria community, please. #academicsky

Secretary Robot Frog says we now get 6 NIH shots per year starting 2026. My Saab misfires more times in a week. Perhaps we can lobby for an exemption for anti-vaccine or autism studies. Cuz, you know, “science” #academicsky

‘Learn how to write peer reviews that benefit authors.’ Translation: unpaid labor training so publishers can invoice us $3,000 a paper. #academicsky

Ahh… Office hours … starts with bright eyes and big questions. You can almost feel the innocence in prospective grad students slowly erode from the weight of academia. A year into grad school and they’ll learn to absorb and schedule misery with other nubes as efficiently as I do. #academicsky

Last night’s nightmare: Kennedy singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ Wish I’d tape-recorded it as an audible scarecrow for the garden—though robot frogs might mistake it for a mating call. #academicsky

My garden harvest was so pathetic I could slice a single cherry tomato into twelve papers and still owe $200 a page. #academicsky #slicethesalami

Planted a garden again this year. Deer ate the beans, trampled the tomatoes, and left me with nothing. Just like publishing: I do the work, they charge me $3,000 in fees, and I’m left staring at an empty plot / discretionary fund. #academicsky

Leaves swirl in the wind, Ungraded papers take flight, Saab flies into dusk. #academicsky

AI essays are useless, so we’re back to pre-2000 grading: oral exams, chalk talks, pop quizzes on paper. At this rate I’ll be examining students by candlelight while my Saab waits outside like it’s 1978. #academicsky

Autumn leaves and Retraction Watch—about the only two things that still bring me joy. One reminds me everything dies, the other proves some papers deserve to. #academicsky

Until AI can diagnose a squeal from my SAAB better than my ears, AI is just a tech-bro bubble about to screw over my pension plan. #AcademicSky

The number of “Book2.xlsx” files on my computer is a number nearing infinity. Like not doing my laundry and folding my clothes, AI isn’t helping much in that regard. #AcademicSky

Fall on campus: leaves crunch, air cools, and for a brief moment even my Saab looks picturesque under a maple tree—before leaking oil all over the season. #academicsky

I tried gardening again this year. It is just academia in dirt: endless effort, tiny harvest, and someone else gets all the glory at the county fair. My okras look like an Akhlut - A hybrid of an orca and a wolf… stalking the sea, land, and egos. #academicsky

Scientists are invisible—faces buried in labs, names lost behind paywalls. Meanwhile, loudmouth podcast bros yell cut research funding and get the 👍🏽❤️ and $ behind their paywalls. My Saab leaking in the driveway gets more recognition than the people who actually keep the lights on. #academicsky

Faculty strategic plans … like candy—glossy arrows, empty pillars, words like ‘synergy’ and ‘transformative’ Reminds me of the dribble on many academic publishers bluesky account descriptions. My Saab’s maintenance manual has more vision and imperative. #academicsky

Deans love strategic plans: N^24 pages of buzzwords, arrows pointing nowhere, and clip-art bridges to ‘excellence.’ My Saab has a robust strategic plan—it just breaks down in the same place every year. Consistent. Dependable. On Point. #academicsky

Another professional meeting, another mouthy member with an opinion on everything. There’s 15 people on this call but only this dude has THE opinion that matters. It’s like listening to my Saab rattle—loud, constant, and never once useful. #academicsky

Saw a toehead LinkedIn ‘researcher’ post today—so lazy they didn’t even bother removing the ChatGPT icons. ✅🧠⚽️🎤 This is where academia is now: copy, paste, humblebrag. Publish it and charge $200 a page. 🤮 #AcademicSky

So tired I feel like my Saab—wheezing, leaking, ready to stall. All I want is to get drunk in a lonely corner and wait for someone to peer review my misery. #academicsky

Wondering how long before godless publisher’s invoice-bot stops barking and starts biting with their insane $200 dollar charge in *a digital only* journal. Part of me says “never publish here again” and another says respond with “Change your damn font size by .004% in the references.” #AcademicSky

Grading papers tonight. Debating whether to mark to Black Sabbath or Sleep. Either way, the students will hear the doom in their margins. #AcademicSky

Academics are forced to slice the salami so thin it’s down to a single word—sold three times so publishers can profit. Tell a *real* story? Forget it. It will cost you an extra $1000 in overrun page charges. Meanwhile real research, like my Saab, sits neglected and leaking in the lot. #academicsky

Open access: where my research is liberated from paywalls only to be imprisoned in my discretionary funds. #academicsky

The academy’s cruel joke: publish real work and get silence. The real work= PhD theses that never make to pubs because the graduates flatlined and work never indexed on “LinkedIn” or God forbid “ResearchGate.” Publish shiny emptiness and get a chair, a title, and applause. #academicsky

Apparently the career ladder isn’t climbed, it’s greased. The chosen ones—10 years my junior—slip up it with nonsense pubs. LinkedIn hydra-headed posters, like overzealous articling student sucking up to chairs like they’re the partners. Meanwhile my work sinks like a Saab in the snow. #academicsky

Fall is here. Students are excited, trees are beautiful, and I’m reminded that academia, too, looks prettiest right before it dies. #academicsky

Today the Saab refused to start until I promised it a citation in my next paper. At this point, it’s my most financially demanding co-author. #academicsky

We invented AI that can fake an academic essay in 5 seconds. But making my own real research open access still costs more than my monthly mortgage or an oil change on my SAAB. Progress, apparently. #academicsky

We can sequence a genome for $100, and get lectures on our phones. But publishing a paper open access? $3,000 and climbing. That’s not progress—it’s extortion with better fonts… and with spammed advertising no less. I didn’t ask for that crap when i download a manuscript. #academicsky

Our chair radiates the energy of someone who got the job by losing a bet. Looks like she’d rather be couponing at Target than steering this sinking ship. #academicsky

Tried to buy prunes and Metamucil. Got stuck in Aisle 6 behind a herd of freshmen with misspelled Mandarin tattoos, arguing about oat milk like it’s quantum mechanics. Constipation is merciful compared to this. #academicsky

Got billed $200 for an extra page in a PDF. That’s not publishing, that’s ransomware. I should’ve just wired the money to a Nigerian prince and at least gotten a better rejection letter. #academicsky

Kennedy’s voice hits frequencies only my Saab’s dying alternator understands. Both make me want to pull over and weep. #academicsky

My vaccine this year was NIH Director Kennedy whispering ‘payline is 8%.’ Well… it wasn’t a whisper, but more like a robotic frog whose voice pitch randomly jumps between syllables. I’m waiting for the day his voice pitch permanently locks to Dora The Explorer. #AcademicSky

Skipped the COVID booster this year. Replaced it with a 90-minute keynote from NIH Director Bennitto Muscleman Kennedy about ‘transformative funding opportunities.’ Stronger side effects: dizziness, rage, measles, and the urge to incline benchpress NOFOs like a MOFO #AcademicSky

New agenda item for faculty meeting: Enhancing educational learning outcomes through strategic alliances with RIZZ and ResearchGate. May they all die by hands of Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of the underworld: devoured slowly by skeletal jaws and dropped in 9 layers of darkness. #AcademicSky

My rizz obeys the second law of thermodynamics: it decreases with time, until I am cold, bitter, and at maximum entropy. Thats when I start marking papers. #AcademicSky

I can’t wait to pay a monthly subscription to have access to tech-bro little brother’s high school project monetize all my labs work funded by gov’t agencies. Its like my saab: started with reasonable intentions, now re-engineered to sap the life from drivers just to keep it alive. #AcademicSky

I can’t think of a faster way to make me vomit than by stringing words together “empowering impact makers” … “mission critical insights” … “advance human progress” A stew of LinkedIn psycho-dribble which really means (ala Bobby Seale) “Stick em up m*f*, thats $200/extra page!” #AcademicSky