I’ve studied or worked at nine of them!

I felt like making a chart about academic novels I've read. Here's the result. I don't have an overall favorite among these, but I'll share a few standouts in the thread:

I spoke at the graduation ceremony for Philosophy at Virginia Tech in 2019, and I learned today that was the last time the department had a graduation speaker. Although it's up to audiences whether I'm a good speaker, at least once I've been the ultimate speaker. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyFa...

Some of @foone.bsky.social's threads are among the most entertaining things I've read on social media. If the idea of MST3K for old computer parts is appealing to you as well, scroll through her archives and donate a few dollars.

I added another photo collage to my office. This one consists of pictures I've taken in Pennsylvania. Because of space constraints, I wanted to create a shape that was organic, asymmetric, and balanced with nearby objects.

Do I have any friends going to AAAI this January in Singapore? The last time I attended AAAI was 2008 in Chicago, making this my longest been-and-returned gap for a conference.

On LinkedIn I've been sharing stories from my academic job search. Here are two about embarrassment: an application question gone wrong and a cover letter mistake that turned out fine. www.linkedin.com/posts/shomir...

Spare a thought for the prosocial benevolence of labeling curbside appliances as broken. I don't know you and you don't know me, but if you lug this dehumidifier home it will only cause you misery. I wrote "DOES NOT WORK" on a piece of masking tape to protect you from false treasure.

Thanks to Lycoming College's Lycoming Scholars program for hosting me for a talk today. I enjoyed talking with students and faculty about my lab's research into the social biases of large language models. I walked around Williamsport afterward and added a fridge magnet to my travel collection.

I recently wrote a single-author paper that was accepted to SIGCSE, ACM's flagship conference on computer science education. I wanted to deconstruct the guidance of student researchers, for the benefit of faculty and also students. Here's a preprint. arxiv.org/abs/2510.08885

Four pictures I took during a recent visit to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, a former psychiatric hospital now run as a museum.

Similar to @askamanager.org 's recommendation, most rejections in academia are by email. If you receive a rejection at all: I never received a reply for ~60% of the positions I applied for.

This Friday (October 17) at West Virginia University I'll give a talk "Natural Language Processing for Privacy Empowerment and Fairness", about my lab's research. It'll be 4pm - 5pm at ESB 501.

Map I hadn't generated before because it took a lot of effort: where I've lived (houses in green), where I've performed professional activities (suitcases in blue), and my flights. I'll use this in a series of talks I'm giving for the honors college about going abroad for research and conferences.

I recently received an email from a student at a different university about my advice pages. I asked for and got permission to share the excerpt below on social media. shomir.net/advice

20 years ago this month I bought a pack of red pens. I was a teaching assistant, and I thought I would need them to grade students' work. However, faculty provided the pens when I needed them, and I still have the ones I purchased. I used one this evening to edit a paper I've written.

The technical report from our Dagstuhl seminar "Grand Challenges for Research on Privacy Documents" has been published. Thanks to all the seminar attendees, from 29 universities or private companies spread across 10 countries, for gathering in Germany to collaborate on this. doi.org/10.4230/DagR...

I mention this incident sometimes in my courses. I use it an example of the importance of human judgement in sociotechnical systems.

With support from my university's Office of Strategic Communications, I wrote an op-ed about the importance of international students to research at US universities. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published it today. www.post-gazette.com/opinion/gues...

i'll decline this writing suggestion from Gmail.

Sunset over the New Carrollton Metro station, from a recent trip to DC.

I just saw a Facebook ad for an herbal supplement that was claimed to help with concentration, focus, motivation, and productivity. Dear reader, its name was Thesis.

Here are four of my advice pages that I periodically share with new university faculty. They’re unofficial, and your mileage may vary by discipline. Remember I'm an associate professor in an iSchool, and I'm a computer scientist by training. (1/)

Today was the first day of fall semester at Penn State. It's also the start of my tenth academic year as a professor. Being recognized in hallways and greeted warmly at meetings still feels novel, though.

The recent iConnect story about me came with a video. I used to dislike how I looked and sounded in recordings. The longer hair and wardrobe upgrades helped in recent years, but it's also the case that our marketing team is excellent at their work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPh4...

Thanks to our college's marketing office for this article about me in iConnect Magazine. It covers the accomplishments I reflect on most often, my teaching, how artificial intelligence is changing academia and industry, and how my advice pages have been received. ist.psu.edu/iconnect/sum...

My editorial "Students are unsung heroes of university research, and federal research funding cuts hurt them most" is now listed on Penn State's Research or Regress page, under Voices for Change. www.psu.edu/research/rea...

A satisfying conversation about writing with someone I’ve just met is a sign we’ll probably become friends.

#soups2025 attendees, if you’re interested, a very red sunset is happening down by the Seattle waterfront.

“The things we make reflect our intent” —Janice Tsai during her #soups2025 lightning talk

For anyone else at #soups2025 who is curious about attendance, the USENIX desk told me about 200 people are registered (for SOUPS specifically).

At #soups2025 this evening.

For #academia, when writing a cover letter for a faculty application, if you know the head of the hiring committee then you can address it to them (i.e., "Dr. [last name]"). However, it's often unclear who that is, and "Dear Hiring Committee" is also fine.

Four pictures from my recent trip to Vienna for #acl2025: the Austrian National Library, Hundertwasser House, Gasometer, and Ankeruhr.

25 years ago I attended the new student orientation for undergraduates at Virginia Tech. I was change-the-world ambitious, but also socially anxious and awkward. ("A shyness that is criminally vulgar", sang The Smiths.) I wanted to make new friends, but I wasn't sure how.

For #academia: When it comes to the campus visit, a typical faculty interview is a full day or even two days, and it's common to have multiple breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with your hosts. www.askamanager.org/2025/08/perf...

This Vietnamese language news article quotes me about the White House’s recent AI plan. I appear toward the end of the video with a voiceover translation. I don’t know how well the translation turned out. vtv.vn/my-cong-bo-k...

I assume “my boss goes days without talking to me” wasn’t a professor, but as an illustration, university faculty can unremarkably go for months without talking with their boss. In particular, tenure-line faculty at R1s have enormous independence and are expected to self-manage most of their work.

Excellent #acl2025 conference wifi this year. I had difficulty finding the password (I had to ask another attendee), but it’s never been overloaded or unreliable for me.

Fellow #acl2025 attendees, if you want a panorama of a busy poster session, the platform above the escalators in X4 is the place to go.

As a grad student, I visited the industry booths partly to ask for internships. As a postdoc, I angled for party invitations. As a professor, I’m browsing for freebie items suitable as toys for my toddler son. I’ve failed at all these, but I seem to be failing upward. #acl2025

I crossed paths with someone at #acl2025 whom I last talked with in 2016. I expressed uncertainty whether they remembered me. They replied: “Your hair is different!” Point made.

“We kindly ask that you now leave the building.” #acl2025

Crowded, popular oral sessions: Down to standing room in bias and fairness. I gave up on getting into the human-centered NLP session, as the crowd extended out the open door and I couldn’t hear the speaker from there. #acl2025

ACL welcome session: It’s “the largest ACL/NLP conference ever”, with 6K participants (5K in-person and 1K online), 6K reviewers, >1K area chairs, and more stats in this slide. #acl2025

For #acl2025 attendees with an interest in Wittgenstein: Haus Wittgenstein, his foray into architecture, is in Vienna. The interior is closed to the public but I visited the outside yesterday and took pictures. Wikipedia article here and pics in the thread below. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haus_Wi...

Toward encouraging public support for research funding, I worked with my university's Office of Strategic Communications to write this op-ed in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. I think the link between research grant money and student training is underutilized when talking with the public.

I'll be participating in this. Faculty friends, if you're interested, ask your university if they'll cover your travel. There doesn't appear to be a sign-up deadline, but I'm guessing it could fill up quickly this year. cra.org/govaffairs/a...

Wanted a spot of color to coordinate with shirts and pocket squares. Discovered I could order lapel pins with custom graphics. Decided to use my digital artwork. Realized I'm basically designing jewelry now.

This August I'll be at SOUPS in Seattle to present our poster titled "The PrivaSeer Project: Large-Scale Resources for Analysis of Privacy Policy Text". It summarizes our NSF-funded work, including a corpus of nearly 4M policies, a search engine to explore them, and analysis of their contents.