At what point will a brave university simply tell its staff to stop applying for grants, and just fund their research or give them time to write instead. I'm sure it would cost less than all that wasted staff time.

'ok I'll read one article on something before starting on my grant proposal' the article:

Happy New Year 2026. As we step into a new year, I wish you health, clarity, and steadiness in uncertain times. May 2026 bring space for thoughtful work, meaningful conversations, and moments of care, for ourselves and for one another.

This is so true it hurts. #AcademicSky

Policy decisions ALWAYS involve trade offs. How you design your policies will impact target populations. Which projects you prioritize over others, which budget items get cash, which issue areas are given all the money, demonstrate government priorities.

A semi-sentient blob of tissue mass has the nuclear codes of the US of A.

I think a lot about the fact that toilets are such an integral part of societal infrastructure and how vital they are for human survival. And yes, I study the governance of toilets, but I also reflect on their vital functions just about every day.

If you ever want to get into a fascinating rabbit hole, I highly recommend learning about the history of arson investigation and the full century of investigation methods that were mostly guesswork (now they’re led by fire science, mostly) www.texasobserver.org/fire-and-inn...

I once told Chris Potter, of Kung Fu fame, at the Au Bar, “I have a massive crush on you please be gay”. He answered “I’m married with 5 kids”.

"Measuring Administrative Burden: Bringing the State “Back in” as a Reflexive Actor in Burden Reduction" by Pierre-Marc Daigneault, Marc Journeault, Laurent Lauzon-Rhéaume, & Lisa Birch examines how governments measure administrative burdens. doi.org/10.1111%2Fpa...

Thrilled to announce that I haven’t done absolutely anything in 2 weeks other than sleep, swim and eat well, and that I am about to start 2026 well rested and rejuvenated and re energized.

I have decided that it's too much trying to expose all the horrors in the US and in Mexico so I am retraining my Twitter/X algorithm to only show me positive stuff. Delusional? Yes. Pragmatic? Also yes. Better for my mental health? Also yes.

jobs at SFU 2 postings, Geography - Assistant Prof (Landscape Ecology // Urban Geography/Climate Crisis) Applications will be reviewed as they are received until the position is filled, with priority given to completed applications received prior to February 2, 2026. csn-rec.ca/job-postings...

You have two days (Saturday and Sunday) in London (England). What do you do that gives you the broadest overview of the city?

On the market for recommendations on what to do/see/eat while in Vienna.

How do we shape siting in a way that benefits the communities where data centers will be sited, how do we think creatively about the possibilities of economies that arise around or adjacent to these installations, and how do we mitigate health and environmental risks (or begin to understand these).

Good geospatial analysis by @pewresearch.org this year on the siting of data centers. It's not likely that we are setting our phones, computers, and other systems aside anytime soon. As a professor, ask me how I know. 1/2 💡🔌 🏛️ #WestVirginia #rural

Issa Rae has canceled her sold out performance at the Kennedy Center. Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens, Peter Wolf, Low Cut Connie, and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., have also canceled. Lin-Manuel Miranda has canceled the entire Kennedy Center run of Hamilton.

what else is there to say

"Never tried therapy before but this is probably it?" 9 words summarising the attitude of Big Tech to all things of which they have no knowledge or experience - with GenAI, they can do [thing] without [thing] experts or even educating themselves on [thing]. My eyes rolled a grand total of 720° 🙄

I assume folks know of the shared intellectual history of the disciplines of planning and public policy. What I did not expect was that social work and public administration would share so many important angles and research avenues.

I have always felt that David Calvey has sort of cornered and monopolized the field of covert ethnography, though I know of other researchers and their projects, but he seems to have capitalized on his time as a bouncer in a Manchester club. #RPVBooks

“It’s so uplifting to see people whose paths might not otherwise have crossed, united in shared purpose, in a belief in our common humanity,” said Noelle Damico, Workers Circle Director of Social Justice, in a new piece from The Guardian. Read it here: shorturl.at/xy315

I ended 2025 so exhausted and overwhelmed that I lost absolutely every single ounce of interest I had in academic work. I took a 2 week holiday where I did absolutely nothing and I am glad to report I feel much better now. I still like academia and research and teaching and mentoring students.

Pay attention

Just so much BS that this planet has to put up with. Tech is out of control.

sharing to read later

The TLDR is that many of the people who gained influence by spreading political point-scoring bullshit during breaking news events are now embedded (often at the top) of many of our federal government agencies… so it’s not at all surprising to see “officials” sharing false speculation during crises.

If anyone has extra time on this holiday weekend, here's a talk where I take folks through this history (of rumor-spreading during crisis events) and connect it to how our information systems, politics, and (increasingly) values have been rewired, reconfigured, and turned on their heads.

Immigration hypocrites all the way down 🧵 bsky.app/profile/owas...

Also: — Marco Rubio, Cuban parents — Kash Patel, Indian parents — Mehmet Oz, Turkish parents

#Instacart, Stop Using American Shoppers as Lab Rats During an Affordability Crisis www.commondreams.org/opinion/inst...

Here's a relatively recent (2024) syllabus for an MA course on #farright #voting

The best blocking function is not BlueSky’s but Threads. What I don’t understand is how, it being a Meta product, can do nuclear blocking and neither Instagram nor Facebook can.

Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas!

Not sure what the American aversion to calling concentration camps "concentration camps" is, but the distinction is breaking down pretty quickly

Or you might call them "camps" where people are to be "concentrated" until they are deported. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Behind the scenes of the U.S. government’s anti-immigrant propaganda machine.

“It is such a serious use of force that it is also expressly recognised as illegal armed aggression under the General Assembly’s 1974 Definition of Aggression,”

Just in time for the holidays, I'm pleased to announce the last new title for 2025 in @universitypress.cambridge.org series Elements in Historical Theory and Practice: María Inés La Greca's "Gender, Theory, and History: on the Knowledge and Politics of Bodies". 1/2

I can assure you more than one Canadian university has thought of this…

#OtD 22 Dec 1988 Brazilian rubber worker activist, environmentalist and Indigenous rights advocate, Chico Mendes, was assassinated in his home by rancher, Darly Alves Da Silva, for trying to protect the Amazon rainforest. Commemorated here: shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/tso...

EXACTLY.

You either win: -$8 million over eight years ($1 million per year) -$4 million over eight years ($500,000 per year) I honestly do not know how I would spend all of this.

Brett Kavanaugh (September 2025): The facts and how they relate to the law don’t matter. Assume ICE and other federal forces always act with integrity, always respect rights, and consistently impose minimal burden. Brett Kavanaugh (December 2025): Should I not have done that? Was that wrong?

To be perfectly honest I absolutely hate the CERCs (Canada Excellence Research Chairs) program. You would need to be awake 24/7 to spend that much money over the 8 years, seriously. You wouldn’t even have enough time in your days to be able to spend that much money (wisely, anyways).

Instead of spending big money to recruit a few dozen academics from outside of Canada, I wish the Liberals invested in the outstanding talent coming out of our PhD programs. Postdocs could be extended (#, duration) for large numbers for the same price. It is top-down, headline seeking politics.

I fully agree. I was really upset to learn all the conditions of the Impact+ program - which doesn’t even pay salaries for the faculty who will be brought to Canada. Echoes of the CERC program with the national inferiority complex that seems to underpin it.