European alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office launches on 9 June: free, open source and online, using existing building blocks. An important step in freeing ourselves from US control. www.zdnet.com/article/euro...

Nice round up. Blazing Combat was shut down by patriotic mag distributors who refused to deliver it to newsstands.

Still remember the crushing moment as a young researcher when I realised that proving something through evidence had damn near no impact on social policy unless it was politically useful to believe it.

In Turkey, a cat comes to an elderly man who earns his living by cleaning shoes at the same time every morning. He asks to have his fur brushed, and the man never refuses. Original post

There's a beaver dam in northern Canada that's twice as wide as the Hoover Dam, and was discovered from satellite photos because it's so remote, and forms a wetland delta despite there not being any distinct creeks or rivers feeding into it.

We promise, bro. We're gonna build utopia, bro. All you have to do is get in this broom closet, bro.

most of the time when people say things like "technofeudalism" or "serfdom" to talk about modern conditions, I would urge you to consider instead the "company town."

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

Humanities and social science profs are finding out how natural scientists treat authorship and we are losing our damn minds.

Wait, what?

A long time ago--it feels like a lifetime ago--I really thought that following rules and procedurals was how you got ethically and empirically better outcomes, by and large. That was fundamentally wrong. Rules mean nothing if some players disregard them and no one enforces them.

Worth mentioning that even as Canvas is “restored,” institutions’ dependence on this product has already foisted additional work, anxiety, and distraction onto faculty and students alike at the worst possible time. None of the systems are without overhead— material or otherwise.

And we just postponed all finals for tomorrow due to the hack. This seems like a bigger deal than my emails from admin make it sound.

Canvas, the Strait of Hormuz for American education

school administrators implementing canvas for every use case

If the end of the semester Canvas hack has taught us anything, it's that universities need to double down on giving everything to borderline monopoly tech run by megalomaniac private equity dbags.

Can't Access Nothin' Vandals Ate System

Not GMU, as far as I can tell, but I'm going to spend the evening downloading backups of my courses. Haven't checked CU.

On behalf of my walrus-obsessed daughter, WTF?

I think it is okay for us to sometimes get news that sounds like it should be good news and not have it possibly actually be bad news.

Hind Rajab would have been 8 today

[guy who missed the first few seconds of Star Wars] whoa is this happening right now? In our galaxy??

OK. Apparently this is content that my Bsky community wants. So here goes. Ranking the AgSecsUSA.

every few months, americans are asked to resume their banquet and pretend a shooting didn't just happen

Every time I see one of my colleagues teach I'm like "damn we're so good at teaching we should make a living salary"

Wasn't expecting class today to include the statements "then my dad joined the rebels and got his arm blown off" or "when my grandfather testified at Nuremberg..."

It’s hard to express how important Iris was to ACT UP’s scientific development. She was the catalyst who started it all. Iris Long, Scientific Mentor to AIDS Activists, Dies at 92 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...

I have long maintained that all engineering or technology related students should be required to watch this movie.

Orban gonna have to change his first name.

No shade on these fine folks, but why do you need a belt in zero-g?

It has been a crazy week, so my daughter has started sending photos from her job. This one was captioned, "The frogs are harmonizing"

Interesting piece by friend of @manchstm.bsky.social, Prof Robert Poole: how does the Artemis II Earthset photo compare to the iconic Earthrise photo from 1968? theconversation.com/how-artemis-...

Gen X collectively reliving Challenger, Columbia and Cold War nuclear holocaust anxiety all in the same week is a fucking lot, y'all.

Have to admit it took a bit to figure out Pam Bondi's connection to the Pinochet nanny

Happy Easter, everyone.

Btw my press funded a small study into best-practices for alt text for illustrations, especially of illustrations of art. The resulting guide is short and clear and available free to download.

The thing that really pisses me off about people who do try to defend this absurdity: (a) rampant adjuncting was objectively NOT the way the old guard "paid their dues," and (b) no one can provide evidence that adjuncting reliably leads to secure employment.

Currently reading Mimi Pond's graphic memoir, "Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me" and it's simply wonderful. Very highly recommend, thank you to @bookmoon.bsky.social for having it.

Why do I have eduroam at the local hipster bakery but not in my classroom and other questions of the modern academic

'“These large-scale protest events make people feel like they’re not alone" Collective catharsis and hitting what she called “a magical number” of participants is not enough to sustain an effective political movement. “What we really need to do is the work of defending democracy in our communities”

I spoke with @nytimes.com about today's #NoKings Day events and why the focus must be on channeling outrage into strategic action (and not meeting some magical number): “It’s not about inflatable costumes. It’s not about clever signs.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/u...

The amount of Gen X queer people we lost to the AIDS epidemic is something that haunts me regularly and I imagine there is a better use of our energy. There is a massive void they left where we have been robbed of watching them age as queer people and experience some of the hard-won joys.

One of the things that becomes very obvious very quickly when you have a neurodivergent kid is how much of education is about performance and not learning.

New inspiration porn form just dropped

The middle class is the new proletariat, clinging to antiquated notions such as the belief that education matters, just as the old working class believed in the sanctity of the job.

I don't normally subscribe to the "German has a word for it" thing because all languages can invent and borrow new words! That said, I can't stop thinking about "hobbyless" as an insult since I saw it a few days ago, so here you go It promotes a growth mindset!! www.tumblr.com/abbiistabbii...

I know things like this are good onramps for new people, but we've had more than a year of onramps. I don't understand the escalation strategy for this approach.

I need to check this out for class

mill's dedication: this is a jointly authored work a century & a half of male editors: mill exaggerated out of a sentimental fondness for his wife mill's letters: no, really, most of "my" work was partly by her, i really could not be clearer on this

Hmmmm