Today is Trans Day of Visibility, and I fight to be as visible as I can every day, because other people's visibility saved my goddamned life, but more importantly because being trans is fucking beautiful. Let me repeat that. Being trans is fucking beautiful. I wouldn't want to be any other way.

academics who've been anti-wikipedia have been wrong all along tbh.

Ryan Gosling is such a delightful leading man. I would watch him in anything

“standard,” edited English is not always the best choice

CPAC speaker: How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings? Crowd: *cheers* CPAC speaker: No. That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again...

This season of survivor is so good. I wish bluesky had trashy tv fandom communities as prominently as twitter used to so I could talk about the War of the Twinks on rn

There’s little more gratifying as an English prof the knowing your students loved a book you assigned them. I’m old and grumpy enough to make a point of saying: appreciating literature and studying literature aren’t the same thing. And classes are about studying. But knowing they liked it helps

Nancy Fraser on point as usual

Okay, but there’s some pretty good evidence that handwriting things is better for kids’ cognition, and cursive is faster. Not everything has to be linked to what you may or may not due in your job. Also, ban AI

I don't understand pricing. I use a software for work that used to cost $700 a year. A couple years ago, they raised the price to $2000. I threatened to leave. They gave me two years at $700. Now those two years are up, I threaten to leave again and they offered me a year FREE.

Funny thing about American mass media is how woke content is broadly popular, routinely pays for itself, and sometimes goes blockbuster, whereas right-wing content is a narrow niche that rarely reaches breakeven, never goes blockbuster, and usually requires immense subsidies for it to exist at all.

Not exactly the same but the gays had to suffer through an entire season of RuPaul calling this definitively gold plunger the “Platinum Plunger”

“Falling on hard times” is not good enough of a reason to go join ICE. Go sell some fish plates ho.

I ended up going with “I acknowledge your decision. Sincerely, Josh.” No greeting. This person writes in the passive voice to deny her complicity (“A decision had been made…”) so it was important for me to counter that

What's the professional way to express dismay to someone when your blood is boiling? Right now I'm torn between "I acknowledge your email and regret your decision," or "I appreciate you letting me know about this regretful decision."

There’s this famous instagram gay whose job, from what I can tell, is just screenshotting funny moments from HBO shows. I don’t know what else he does. And I’m obsessed. I need to find a way to do that for a living

One of the automated tasks Canvas is promising is "rubric generation." What if I said that moving away from rubric-based assessment is a necessity to preserve your labor and freedom to teach as you wish? We have to look underneath the hood of the systems this technology is shaping.

So happy to see this out in the world. Check out chapter 46!! @joshuabarsczewski.bsky.social is a joyful and challenging co-author. Love him the pieces! wacclearinghouse.org/books/practi...

Happy publication day! @timothyoleksiak.bsky.social and I have a chapter in Storied Practices: Positionality in Writing Studies, edited by Kristine Acosta, Michelle Cowan, Rebecca Rickly, Nancy Small, and Erica M. Stone. The whole collection is here: wacclearinghouse.org/books/practi...

Scissors Sisters playing at Planet Fitness. Good job to the queen who makes the playlists 😂

Yall I actually had time to write today. It felt so good

At what point did ups decide we need 5-8 emails for every package

Don't even tell me about the bride's head unless it's being revisited

During this convo, one student talked about how a prof singled out her roommate’s discussion board post for praise because of how clearly it was written. Student knew her roommate had just used ChatGPT for the entire answer w/o doing the work. Student is furious.

Y’all this event was so great. Full audience!

Today was a good teaching day. Both classes were fun and thoughtful spaces. AI, work-life balance, and austerity measures sap me of my joy in this profession, but students have not

"Make shit up that supports what I want to believe" is the LLM methodology

My Banned and Censored books class just devolved into an unplanned conversation about GenAi. I rolled with it because I wanted to hear what they had to say. Y’all, students have much more nuanced and profound thoughts than we often given them credit for. Lots of support for the right to refuse

we don't need any more proof that genAI has a detrimental impact on your writing abilities than the arguments the pro-AI rhetoricians are making

😂

People shouldn't feel bad about previously admiring someone when they didn't know about the terrible harms that person committed, but we should challenge ourselves to consider how pedestalizing and prioritizing the legacies of charismatic leaders can create harmful dynamics. That can be addressed.

We can't let AI ruin writing. A student asked for several extensions because she stressing about an assignment. I granted them. What I got was an essay twice as long as what I requested, full of insight I never imagined. She's better off for having written it, and I'm better for having read it

One thing that AI evangelists seem to assume, particularly legal AI evangelists assume, is that the thinking and analysis is quick, and the writing is just tedious busywork that slows us down. But the writing IS the thinking and analysis. You work out the thinking and analysis by writing it down.

"I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work. The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way." Goddamnit.

I've been following this Cesar Chavez stuff over the past day with a pit in my stomach. Huerta's statement is incredibly important and I'm so incredibly sad for everyone affected by this.

My local grocery store’s prepared foods department makes these gross chicken sandwiches that feel like cardboard and the bun is always weirdly moist from condensation. Tell me why I find them irresistible 😩😩 every time they’re out I buy two and shove them in my face on the drive home

Today in my job I get to prepare my thoughts and remarks for a panel discussion on Heated Rivalry 😂😂 academia is a hoot sometimes

There are very few English professor emergencies. It can (probably) wait.

Tremendous credit to my brilliant colleagues in CompRhet who are defending themselves and against public bad faith reads and logical fallacies re the overwhelmingly passed CCCC Resolution on the right to refuse GenAI.

People asking for decorum about genAI need to get a grip. Billionaires are poisoning our planet for slop. We should be more RUDE.

I mean, many students likely weren't able to register for the right courses even if we're nostalgic about it. But, bigger picture: MANY MANY parents go very far out of their way to prevent their children from ever learning independence. Parents really need to do some soul searching about that

Ever wonder who would win a battle between Saint Patrick and Medusa

Aristotle dead in a ditch

I'm going with the Pope on this.

The Nationality Rooms at University of Pittsburgh. Likely influenced my decision to apply to Pitt. I learned as a student that having classes in some of those rooms was awful because the furniture was so uncomfortable. Inspiring? yes. Practical? no. Trying having class discussions in this:

Students and faculty have the right to refuse GenAI. Be cynical about the rhetoric of inevitability Proud of CCCC for this resolution

It’s weird that there’s a branch of academics pretending that it’s acceptable to have LLMs write any portion of their manuscripts or other forms of public engagement. It’s not. You’re supposed to be the author. No matter what your new toy can do.

Sinners deserves Best Cinematographer simply for the fact that it's a modern movie where you can tell what's going on during all the night scenes

Jesus when he comes back to Earth:

"We need more Bort license plates in the Gift Shop. Repeat, we are sold out of Bort license plates."