Random shuffle pushing Barren Path into West of Roan finally got me to remember to turn off the stupid apple music default 4-second song transition cross-fade setting.

I have been enjoying vol 1 of Solvej Balle’s _On the Calculation of Volume_ (tr. Barbara Haveland. Fortunately Zola only enjoyed the cover because I still have a lot of November 18ths to get through.

Most coverage is local so far, but after another hack & ransom demand, Canvas is down for maintenance thetech.com/2026/05/07/c... I checked: 24 of the 25 largest universities in the US all use Canvas - Texas A&M, Ohio State, UW, UW Madison, UMN, Penn... I think NYU is sole exception (Brightspace)

He'd sing lame lyrics

Sharing this screen grab from a friend at NIH (with permission). This is a checklist program officers have to complete before a grant can be awarded. The first question: "Is this grant All Clean/Clear in the NIH Text analysis Tool?" 🧵1/3

I’d rather not be in a temporary office with a construction elevator right outside the window, but it was nice to see the local hawk up close.

I suppose getting old is all about managing ever-increasing types of psychic damage, but wondering why you’re getting a glossy mag from a university you have no affiliation with, then realizing it’s because you made a donation to a memorial fund for a friend & peer is a new one.

I got fashion flip-flops & chintzy chanclas & mystifying mules, but fresh out of style slides

Sun dog vs Sunn dog

RIP Vincent the Cat, late of the lovely Etcetera Coffehouse in Paducah, KY. Cats shorten my breath dangerously, but he was a good one & was always a menacingly comforting presence.

When I was a youth, there was a caltech chemistry dept softball team that got a bunch of caps from INTERNATIONAL BOAR SEMEN (“The AI Innovators since 1976”) & played under the name HOG HEAVEN. Every time someone yelled “good eye” it was clearly an omen. internationalboarsemen.com

Finally got to see @billorcutt.bsky.social & Chris Corsano & Ava Mendoza & Cyrus Pireh with a bunch of other folks playing Four Louies. It was beautiful.

Sad to hear that Chuck Casey has died. He was an old friend of my dad's and always a really nice guy. cen.acs.org/people/obitu...

Jim O'Neill has officially been nominated to be NSF Director as of yesterday.

about to fly down to Roanoke for a seminar at Virginia Tech tomorrow. First time outside of greater DC Virginia. Basking in the beautiful drones of Daniel Bachman’s latest (from a couple hundred miles northeast) on the tarmac. danielbachman.bandcamp.com/album/revolu...

Last point on this article: the two NSF admin guys more or less straight out admit they're going to follow Trump's 2026 budget for the agency, not the actual budget passed by Congress. Which is, you know, not legal.

On Feb 2, St. John's University admin informed us they were discontinuing the chem major with limited time to appeal. They sent an email to our chair at 10 am and then our current and incoming students at 10:30 am. No discussion with faculty. Same thing to physics, and other programs.

Instead of restocking the beer fridge in advance of the storm, stayed home to test out the CV + suboctave generator I finished building yesterday while the garage was above freezing. I hope I won’t regret this decision.

🔴 Muere Willie Colón, leyenda de la salsa en Nueva York, a los 75 años

The kid’s WHRC radio show moved to Thursdays, 7-8 pm. On now! (so far Galaxie 500 & Brian Eno for the old timers) streaming.radio.co/sf1c16c728/l...

I just wanted a pig ear and he wouldn’t give it to me

Peace & love to Andrew Ranken. Randomly pulled up an old one where he’s a ghostly figure clobbering a couple of drums behind the rest of the band, who seem like they’ve been hitting the amphetamines more than the booze. youtu.be/CSj4Bzxi0lM?...

This a word cloud from the titles of ~1100 terminated NSF grants. It is hard not to see these grant terminations as an attack on the training of the future United States scientific workforce.

Trying to use the powerpoint accessibility checker to make slides more accessible and for no good reason setting something to the top of the Reading Order sends it to the bottom in Stacking Order. Moving the item back to the front sends it to the end of the Reading Order. What a feature!

that miami qb could’ve done a more convincing king diamond tribute

Making a pot of tea to prepare for my ritual reading of Letter from Birmingham Jail (Reposting with better link) www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets...

Thank you @luca.run (and @hebagowayed.bsky.social for the posts).

decided that parental duties required leaving a session at 2 pm to catch at least part of the kid’s radio show (on iphone speakers in a mostly abandoned stretch of the Honolulu convention center) #pacifichem streaming.radio.co/sf1c16c728/l...

Seems like this happens every time I try to go to #pacifichem

After noting a soggy forecast for #pacifichem next week, it was amusing to find that searching for “haole rot” on wikipedia takes you straight to the entry for Tinea versicolor

After much research and development I have made an offline version of ChatGPT. Now you can save water and electricity while navel-gazing, and carry one of the world's most powerfully annoying AI chatbots in your pocket.

the kid’s on WHRC again soon streaming.radio.co/sf1c16c728/l...

not sure I should be allowed to go to holiday craft market things if this is all I end up buying. a blue christmas indeed.

learning the building where I took AP exams in 1989 has become a place where my brother is going to see Jonathan Richman play in a few weeks makes me feel old, but wishing @stcauditorium.bsky.social the best & hoping to catch a show there one of these days

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..." https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

What better use of class time is there than to ask your class of students a few years out of high school & presumably mostly there to learn about what’s in the course description to accept your apology/explanations for past bad actions (while still retaining the capacity to assign final grades).

Sunday mornings aren’t going to be the same

Who’s a pretty boy then? 🦜🦜🦜

Preservation scientists are using polymer chemistry to help prevent old audio and video tapes from degrading beyond recognition: cen.acs.org/analytical-c... #chemsky 🧪

as somebody also born in Michigan with a chemistry degree from a PUI, I have to say I’m disappointed.

Listening to Silt Remembrance Ensemble in the car & keep glancing at screens saying ATTENTION !!! and worrying the car is about to break down. As long as the music kept going it wouldn’t be all bad. lukestewart.bandcamp.com/track/attent...

unexpected moment of parental joy listening to the kid play The Lung by Dinosaur Jr on her radio show (& then following it up with new Armand Hammer).

Pre-ACA, I was a postdoc on an NSF fellowship at a university that didn't offer employment benefits to independent fellows. At that time, being a woman meant that my premiums were double that of my male counterparts. The extra cost came out of my grant's budget for benefits, equipment, and travel.

"Once these platforms are in place on CUNY campuses, they can license them at cost to SUNY, to NYC Public Schools, potentially to any educational institution who chooses them over the always overpriced, often enshittified, ever-extractive for-profit EdTech platforms."

Great to visit the kid on her new home turf this weekend & meet some of her new friends & see some old friends (& white knuckle through two exciting baseball games in unsympathetic territory)!

should’ve made the prop bet that the game would last longer than the two sessions of western regional acs talks I sat through today