What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

This cute graphic seems to undersell the problems with Canvas just a tiny bit. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Ca...

I feel like small matters such as “selling off most of the things that help governments to make themselves useful, out of pure hardcore ideological conviction” and “a pathological loathing for investment in services and infrastructure” may also have contributed

So I'm not the only one, and it's not just in my corner of the field... It seems like people are not encouraged to read widely, or at all. And a propos, my fave meme....

How do publishers extract money, free labor, and data from universities? Read it in this open-access blog: socialsciencespace.com/2026/04/how-... Based on chapter 9 of this open-access book: doi.org/10.66742/VPY...

Call for Contributions to a Sourcebook for Histories of Weather & Weathering teleskopos.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/c... Full details linked and here teleskopos.wordpress.com/wp-content/u... It will be edited by me, @lottaleiwo.bsky.social and Tamara Culkins. Please share! #histSTM #envhist 🗃️📜

National Weather Association May Webinar: One Year Later - Recapping the Impactful St. Louis and Kentucky Tornadoes of May 2025 Thursday, May 14 | 1 PM ET (12 PM CT) Register through the NWA Members Portal.

🌡️ Météo France porte plainte ce jeudi après que sa station de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle a affiché des écarts de température incohérents durant une même heure. Les soupçons se portent sur... des tentatives de manipulations de parieurs sur Polymarket.

Thanks to Hugh - detailed evidence on HE pay.

In the town of Lamont, Oklahoma east of Blackwell and near the Kansas border, a Department of Energy atmospheric monitoring station sniffed out a compound never before detected in the air over North America. And it’s toxic. www.oklahoman.com/story/news/s...

That feeling when you finally nail an argument in a draft manuscript. (This manuscript has been in the works for over 20 years.)

When it's your job to do a thing....

Revisiting one of my earlier papers in my career to help a junior researcher make sense of their research. Written during a productive writing period when I was only partially employed. How to Research and Write Effective Case Studies in Meteorology. doi.org/10.55599/ejs...

Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited

From “The Simpsons” house genius John Swartzwelder, interviewed in The New Yorker by Mike Sacks

Please read this essay. 🧵 "AI boosters seem to think that when people write they are directly transferring thoughts and ideas that exist pristinely in their heads directly into language. They see the effort of writing as something that gets in the way of this pure process."

I wrote about why we should keep reading and writing www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Heartbreaking description of the pointless, thoughtless damage being done to the Kennedy Center. It was such an important part of life in Washington, and is now being destroyed for no reason www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

“We are launching a portal for parents to basically submit their identification, even if they don’t want to be users of Kalshi, to see if someone is using it. Because then they can see if their children are using their ID and police it…”

So proud of being British that you wear your flat cap underneath your motorcycle helmet.

The Tom Waits / Massive Attack collaboration is out...

“In my view this stuff isn’t complicated. You say, ‘don’t set the cookie.’ They set the cookie. The regulators see a fox going into the henhouse and the fox says, ‘I’m just here to count the eggs, not to eat any chickens.’ And they take them at their word."

Ray Stevens health news: lost45.com/2026/04/08/4... #musicnews

Happy Easter

Well, this is simply infuriating. Someone's got to fight this in court. BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service open.substack.com/pub/morethan...

What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.

The writing tips I published one by one here have now been gathered up and published by Ed Simon in the *Pittsburgh Review of Books*. Happy to make them available here: pghrev.com/sixteen-writ... Be sure to check out the relatively new PRoB while you are there!

Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels

If you use GitHub (especially if you pay for it!!) consider doing this *immediately* Settings -> Privacy -> Disallow GitHub to train their models on your code. GitHub opted *everyone* into training. No matter if you pay for the service (like I do). WTH github.com/settings/cop...

The AP's story on the IOC's new policy mentions that it "also restricts" athletes like two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya. That word "also" is doing a lot of work. New piece on who this policy is actually about: www.readtpa.com/p/the-iocs-n...

Strong recommendation to teaching faculty to just say no to this stuff, even if you are AI curious/enthusiastic. This is meant to reduce faculty autonomy and capture human labor with automation. You're selling out your future self and the profession as a whole. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

It's happening. european-alternatives.eu/alternatives...

Yes, good point, Chris. The article starts the framing as "many meteorologists on the internet", then progresses to "the weathermen of the world" two paragraphs later. 🤪

Excellent essay on the academic sins in poor scholarship with the literature. Regarding point 6 on miscitations: One of my highly cited papers argues not to use moisture flux convergence to forecast convection initiation, but sadly you wouldn't know that from most of the citations it's received.

By popular demand, here is the full, glorious message from Aberystwyth University Library, on their blog: wordpress.aber.ac.uk/librarian/?p... Hat tip to @walkyouhome.bsky.social for prompting me to realise it was a blog post, and thus available to you all ❤️

Separated at birth?

As a PhD meteorologist with over 30 years experience, I'm stunned that I had never heard of the Kentucky Meat Shower before. 🥩⛈️ Thank you for your service, sir! 🧪

Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference: Things in US science are far, far worse than people know. Far worse than even other scientists know. 1/

By how much and for how long will the upcoming weather pattern--an astonishing anticyclone--be breaking March records in the west? A lot, and a long time. Here's GFS forecast 500hPa height compared to the March record. Breaking monthly records by >50m, and 2 to 5+ days in monthly record territory.

My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):

Yesterday, I was reading a used book from 1959 I bought some years ago, and I found this bookmark, which must have been there when I bought the book. Given the age of the book and Deese at Johns Hopkins, the bookmark would be from the 1960s. Useful advice to students even now. #TimeCapsule

This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that they’re the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.

China just had their warmest winter on record. 🔥🔥🔥

DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE! On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules. Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel. If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...

All lined up…

AI: Hold my beer.