I'm glad I missed reading the original essay calling for the shutdown of CTLs. Ridiculous. As someone at a SLAC who ran a CTL for 6 years: I had NO power to require any faculty member to change their teaching in any way. The activities were opt-in. Great convos occurred. SMH.

Tonight's the night... My first play is opening! Send luck to all of us involved in the production...even the nervous writer in the audience. 😆

It is so depressing watching everything previous generations fought and died for be dismantled piece by piece. These basic protections and institutions, while imperfect, still pushed in the right direction. We are failing future generations and leaving a worse world behind for them.

“Use AI to brainstorm but not to write.” “Use AI to help you outline but not to write.” These are commonly proposed as “ethical” ways for undergrad students to use AI, but I’m sorry, brainstorming & outlining are just as integral to writing as the actual construction of sentences.

Be ungovernable.

Something I really love that we picked up from our music teacher: When a kid says no to a hug or a kiss or whatever, answering "okay, good boundary" works really well. It affirming the no and at the same time lets other adults know you're not gonna dwell or be weird about it

Such an amazing experience today sharing the platform with the amazing & brilliant Susan Muaddi Darraj along with my dear co-editor and collaborators @somishmash.bsky.social, @robinfield.bsky.social and @amitbaishya.bsky.social! And wow, how gorgeous is Swarthmore College!

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

New issue of Zeal: A Journal for the Liberal Arts is available now! Featuring two Provocations & Occasions essays and an Author Meets Critics forum on Zena Hitz's book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.

"Adan" shared this photo from the Coachella CA where hes picking green beans. "I get paid 40 cents per pound. The work is exhausting - especially due to the excessive heat in the area. But this is how I support my family." #WeFeedYou

Manchester University Press is proud to launch Radical Histories, a new series dedicated to the individuals, movements and ideas that have challenged political, social and cultural authority. Call for proposals now open. Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/04...

One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.

This. Also LLMs don't understand that they are dealing with words, with meaning. All the shite they swallowed is chopped down into "tokens". They don't see words or phrases. They see just shapes, in a pattern. They feed us what usually comes next, in that pattern. There is no understanding.

It’s not limited to America….it’s a global issue

Happy Friday!

Happy Tax Day. Just a reminder, as you potentially owe Uncle Sam: Mass incarceration costs the U.S. $445 billion every single year.

If you paid taxes for 2025, you likely paid: $124 — school lunch & nutrition programs $49 — diplomacy to prevent wars $19 — USPS $19 — Federal Aviation Administration $18 — national parks and $4,049 — weapons and war. These priorities are hurting us all. We need change. #TaxDay

Wearing the bracelet given to me by two students last semester.

This weekend I gave a presentation to a group of mostly college-aged folks and had a little line at the beginning of my slides that described it as an "AI-free presentation made by a human, for humans" and I had to pause for clapping at that part you love to see it

Springtime dress and nails

They better not be out here exterminating carpenter bees. You know who else was a carpenter?!

Listen, I didn't want to do Dr. Strangelove ... (1964) this week, but this man is obviously a psychotic. Kubrick's satire is important for working through Trump's purposely vague threat that invokes the terror of nuclear fears and the truth that the POTUS is a terrorist, a psychotic terrorist.

So if you see this & could, please share that amazing, independent, 100% free as well as Nazi-free & AI-free public scholarly site that Vaughn created & where we both now share our own work as well as feature resources & links for fellow writers & public scholars. @hcrichardson.bsky.social 🗃️

"All we say to America is, 'Be true to what you said on paper.'" These words — spoken by MLK Jr. shortly before he was killed on this day in 1968 — ring just as true now. Let's honor his legacy by continuing the fight for social and economic justice.

BREAKING: For the first time ever, GasBuddy data showing average diesel prices have risen above $8 per gallon in San Francisco, CA- the first ever U.S. city to reach the $8 mark ever.

Well, that was unnecessary 😶

My colleague’s brilliant salad dressing hack: using a honey container to bring homemade dressing to work.

The. Rise. Of. Cognitive. Surrender. Study finds that people who use GenAI chatbots rely on them 80% of the time, and develop almost no capacity to recognize when a chatbot is feeding them faulty information. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Tonight I learned a valuable cooking lesson: chili powder and cayenne powder are not the same. 🥵

A remarkable photo from #NoKings in DTLA from Connor Sheets of @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/l...

Emily Tucker, the Executive Director of @georgetownprivacy.bsky.social, remains stellar and GOATed. medium.com/center-on-pr...

It is quite telling that since the horrific story of Cesar Chavez re: sexual abuse broke earlier this week and calls to change the names of schools and other public spaces named in his honor, not one conservative voice has stepped forward to object that this would be tantamount to erasing history.

well done everybody

gay yoda complimenting his nonbinary friend: mm, giving it's

Powerful stuff from our students: "AI cannot coexist with education — it can only degrade it.... With our own university leading the charge, AI is now corrupting those few sacred spaces and leaving us with nowhere to engage in true scholarship."

…

1000 times this.

this piece at the princeton university museum of art really moved me (and felt far too relevant.) artist: matthew day jackson title: august 6, 1945

That’s what I tell my students. My brain will be fine. I studied, got my PhD, got tenure. They are the ones whose brains will be at a disadvantage because they chose not to develop them.

There are at least three major news stories about sexual assault and abuse of power by men in prominent positions this week. Government, labor, academia; the culture is everywhere, and women disproportionally bear the weight of the consequences. If this week feels extra heavy, be kind to yourself.

What's up with students strolling into an exam late?? Baffling to me.

These folks are real ones because their first recommendation is to break something mhanational.org/resources/10...

dolores huerta is stronger than me bc if a man raped me twice and both times resulted in pregnancies and i had to watch people follow him and throw him parades and name streets after him i would lose every single vestige of my sanity

I have a research joke but before I publish it I need to pay Elsevier a couple thousand euros.

I have a joke about grant reviews, but I won’t know whether it’s funny for another 6 months.

I have a conference joke - actually it’s really more of a comment?

I have a counseling joke, but I can only tell it (with identifying information withheld) in an educational context to peers whose professional ethics prevent them from repeating it.

My students use composition notebooks that I pass out and collect at the end of class for their daily course engagement (formerly known as homework). It's working well. What have you tried?