extremely unfortunately dwelling on a random skeet that makes me feel absolutely miserable (it was not aimed at me, it was about academia)

man, university libraries are amazing. you can just ask them to help get some obscure thing and they're like "doing that is actually our job, not only are we good at it but also we are excited to make this happen for you"

NYT: "no one has ever thought of teaching ranching at university" Every ag school: um, would you like to meet our cows NYT: "No, not like that. More romantic. More dilletante. Ugh, we're not /farmers/."

"Media is not a puzzle you can beat" is something many people need rammed home

Item #1? Stealing a single eel. That’s right, folks. Steal 1 eel and you’re a criminal. Steal 75,00 eels and you’re the bishop of Ely.

soooooo distracted right now

suddenly realized that someone probably sells replica wax tablets and that would be a lot of fun in class, where I am constantly desperately trying to make students pay attention, have fun, and learn something. so now I need to convince my department to pay for them. (they do exist.)

My new #UrbanPrehistory blog post reporting on the horrible fate of the Bogleys Stone of Fife - Barn Storm. This contains a trigger warning for anyone who thinks our heritage - and megaliths - matter. With thanks to Sam McKeand theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2026/05/19/b...

Sometimes the most unassuming artefacts are utterly incredible! Take this piece of wood … It is a spear point worked from yew about 420,000 years ago! 🤯 Known as the ‘Clacton Spear’ it is the world’s oldest known preserved wooden spear! Natural History Museum, London 📷 by me #Archaeology

find a way to get imprisoned with a cultured, intelligent priest who knows how to invest wisely and can tell you the location of a secret treasure, escape from prison, secure the treasure, move to the city, set up shop as an investor

Just gonna go ahead and post this again, 'cause it's still fuckin' relevant.

sad again

I realize I sound like old man yelling at clouds but... ...in my day WE READ ALL THE CITATIONS BEFORE WE CITED THEM. That's how you GAIN THE KNOWLEDGE TO CITE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. Signed: Someone who literally read two whole books on the color blue just to write a single 1000 word article.

Not fight or flight, but a secret third thing where you panic and overshare the importance of studying up on our five stratovolcanoes and knowing if you are in a volcano hazard zone

rare example of actually decent apology / reversal on "adult content" rules. unsurprisingly, payment processor pressure behind the scenes central to what happened at all

I am staggered by the sheer hugeness of this. The #WelshGovernment has a policy of bilingualism. All meetings include translators, so that speakers of English or Welsh can participate equally. But every member of the Welsh Cabinet is a native speaker of #Cymraeg […] [Original post on mastodon.ie]

I am SAD. maybe I need to play dress-up with the cosplay stuff I haven't touched in months. (I got a new wig!)

apparently all I want to eat right now is chips and salsa, which is fine, I guess, since that's basically a salad, but ??? sure why not.

🚨Breaking news: Gray wolf BEY03F, who was spotted in Los Angeles County in February has become the first wild wolf to enter Sequoia National Park in more than 100 years, according to the California Wolf Foundation. Read more: https://bit.ly/4uZXsE8

Tom Kane has passed away at the age of 64 He voiced Yoda, Professor Utonium, and many other roles

I still can't believe that my institution put their accessibility training for online teaching in video. that's not accessible to ME, THE INSTRUCTOR.

one of the funny things about this conference is because it is one (1) time zone eastward it temporarily resets my body clock so my schedule is actually halfway normal for a little while. anything in my own time zone (central) or westwards has zero effect.

In general, the focus on what professors do in the classroom is wrong. The focus should be on how the administrators run schools. Administrations hiring more fulltime faculty and reducing class sizes would go much farther to addressing the problem than any ideas about "engaging assignments"

So many pieces are like "just switch to oral exams and in class writing on paper" okay, how is that working for someone adjuncting online classes with a total of 150 students a semester?

AI in academia conversation is completely warped by how only professors platformed to write about it are tenured at elite schools. What works in a 12-person Princeton classroom has basically no relationship to your average college's 40 person online class taught by an underpaid adjunct...

please remember all of us who will dislike Nolan's Odyssey for non-chud reasons.

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

trying to figure out if my air conditioning is working or not and I am genuinely unsure. :/ which is obviously not great.

Your reminder to stop and smell the flowers on this beautiful sunny day!☀️🐺 #HappySunday

Your time will come. 🗃️🎓

If you joke about how you wish the south had been allowed to secede, the only conclusion I can come to is that you're a screaming racist who is completely ignorant of civil rights history. Don't get it twisted, y'all. White folks in the north had basically NOTHING to do with that progress.

Up at 3:15 to catch a 4 am shuttle for a 6 am flight only to open my phone to a barrage of KNOW WHERE THE EXTREME WEATHER SHELTER IN YOUR BUILDING IS emails from my property management company, so now I have to cross my fingers that my ORD-FSD flight actually happens.

okay I acquired eleven books (eight free, three purchased), now to uh. get those in my suitcase. I did this last year and I think I had more stuff coming in then.

Let’s take a quick look at LOTR from Sauron’s perspective, where it resembles nothing so much as a counter-espionage spy thriller.

Drunk! At the medieval studies conference. Anyway I've now acquired eight free books, who knows how I'm getting these home.

Okay I'm tired of the conference now but at least I've acquired five free books.

No fucking way lmao

There is Discourse in my field that I was unaware of but it has now come up multiple times (not in response to my research, it's something I don't deal with directly) which means I have to hunt down the source.

I am drunk on wine from the early medieval reception

Exciting news - Red Wolves Martha and Oka have welcomed a pup! The boy, born on April 29, received a quick health exam today to confirm he's growing healthy and strong. With just 26 Red Wolves known to remain in the wild, this pup is the future of his endangered species. Join us in celebrating!🐺🐾🎉

It is kinda reassuring to see an extremely established academic editing and cutting down her conference paper minutes before the panel starts because she just realized she mis-timed it. Just like the rest of us!

what republicans don’t understand is that by not allowing atlanta to have a proper subway like a real city, it will continue sprawling until it eats everything. atlantans don’t care, they’ll drive in from los angeles

Under 'medical history', we were hoping for something more specific to you personally. You wrote "Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928".

The Pike’s Peak Humane Society has a social media manager who is very good at their job

In 2026 how does no one presiding over or moderating a hybrid panel know how to use Zoom. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

This has been said to death but I'll just say it again: if you're in the creative arts space stop calling your art "content". Call it "work"! Calling your art "work" shows it's the result of time and skill. "Content" makes something sound like it has no purpose other than to take up space.

People who love to blithely throw around "just move" aren't taking the horror of this seriously. No one in this country should have to flee their home, their history, their family, their support system. Your rights should not begin & end at state lines in fucking 2026. This is an abomination.

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

US universities genuinely are like “welcome to Tennessee Agricultural College in Bumfuck Nowheresville. We invented the modern potato and our facilities include a particle accelerator, nuclear reactor, and TOP500 supercomputer. Tuition is $12,000 for instate students and we have 40,000 of them”