Happy Pride Month! I just printed pronoun stickers for the @cpsa-acsp.bsky.social Women’s Caucus social tomorrow, which is open to people of all genders!

As a @thenewschool.bsky.social @nssrnews.bsky.social alum, this is bullshit. Time for the university to break down to its component parts and let it be built up again to actually serve its purpose(s).

This is blasphemy. I raise the “tofu spread” banner high. (Also, nearly every bagel place has vegan cream cheese because it’s all downstream of kosher food culture.)

Me for the next four months: “is this a hot flash? An antidepressant side effect? Or is it just hot???”

This is a cat checkpoint; relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone. 🐈 Have I introduced the newest Rapoport-Willses yet? Meet Eleanor/Ringo (long story) and Petra.

I took Amtrak from Montreal to New York, and despite it being a 12-16 hour process (bc of the transfer from Ottawa), it was actually great. Comfy seats, gorgeous views, decent wifi, acceptable food. Miles better than flying, and I don't drive...

One of today’s speakers shared a GoFundMe for bail for a detained West African man they met through their research. I’ve chipped in $10 - please chip in if you can! gofund.me/220e0ce08

Great slides from Young Kwon, NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. on language justice. Thinking dialectically btwn NYC/Ottawa - I think NYC should be the model for large, multilingual cities, but official language policies create different policy and practice environments that affect outcomes.

Listening to @camillemackler.bsky.social presenting on legal and social infrastructure - making the excellent point that NYC has responded with money, but not with building permanent structures that can adapt to changes in arrival flows. @gc-migration.bsky.social

Summary findings from research by Liza Steele at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social - NYC residents remain largely pro-immigrant. It’s good to know. @gc-migration.bsky.social

Just saw a chart of asylum applications granted in the US since 2016: yikes. Hovered in the 40% range under Obama, 25-35% in Trump 1, 40-55% for Biden…and it started at 20% for Trump 2 and is now down to 5%. Not surprising but pretty horrifying to see.

Spending today at @baruch.cuny.edu for the Asylum in the City conference, bringing me back to my roots as a New York-oligist (even though all my data is from Ottawa). Thanks to @gc-migration.bsky.social for organizing it!

It’s been longer since I left the city than I lived there, and yet I will never feel as home as I do eating a pumpernickel bagel with tofu scallion cream cheese on a MTA bus.

I might have woken up at 4:30 in the goddamn morning and I might be spending 14 hours today on a train but at least I got an email that contains the amazing phrase “zone de nidification de bernache du Canada.”

The “good” thing about students not reading the directions for the final project and just getting ChatGPT to do it for them is that marking those projects is, at least, fast…

There’s being an absentminded professor, and then there’s having to correct the proof for my business cards three times because each time I notice a new typo. (#1: they misspelled my name. #2: gave my home postcode, not my work postcode. #3: phone ext is wrong. 2&3 are def my fault.)

The exciting news chez moi: kittens!

Chip in if you can

First time in my 13 years of conducting research in Canada that I've had to look up how to address an MP by email when you're writing to them for an interview. For future reference: just Mr./Ms./Mx. Please enjoy our very British system: www.canada.ca/en/canadian-...

We might reach 90% funded today. I’m truly so grateful for each and every one of you who has shared and supported this book of Palestinian fantasy, science fiction, and horror. www.kickstarter.com/projects/158...

As Alfredo Foucault once wrote

I know that @jamiefinemusic.bsky.social is from Ottawa, but then one of her songs comes on the playlist and I'm hit with the lyric "at the cafe right near Bank and Walkley" and was like, oh right, this is LOCAL local.

I remain obsessed with quantum mechanics despite having gotten a 1 on the AP Physics test 26 years ago.

First commute by bike of the year! (To the train station, not all the way to work - it’s gonna take a while until I have the stamina for 10-12km each way!) #bikesky #yow

When I saw this announcement, I thought immediately of my friend who married rich. They split their time between a house upstate and an apt in the city. Would this affect them? And then I realized no, because 1) they rent their apt and 2) even if they bought, comparable units are $2-4mil.

The media office asked me for a blurb to send out for press inquiries on the draft and now I am KICKING MYSELF for going with “no one wants this” rather than coming up this much more interesting angle. *hat-tip*

Me, designing a class: I think it's really great to assign group projects, because it reduces the amount of marking, and it's really important for students to learn how to collaborate and cooperate. Me, the last week of classes, always:

Let me say this plainly: Iranian children have as much of a right to live and thrive as American children. Their babies MUST be as precious to me as my 6 niblings and my baby grandnib are IF I want them to have a future. If I want a future for my kin AND humanity, I MUST act like it. So must you.

When I got into the organized anti-war movement in the late 90s, I thought the movement elders’ fixation on nuclear disarmament was quaint. I would like to apologize to the Quaker retirement home baddies for doubting them.

Good food writing is my absolutely favorite thing. I’m thrilled to subscribe to @feedravenous.bsky.social !

My “continue watching” is currently The Mentalist and Cooking Class Wars. Murders and cakes are the only two buttons I need, baby.

Literal jump scare from that quote.

Today's class was the one day a year where I have to teach about statistics and oof, I'm tired. But I hope my not-at-all-fluid demonstration helps show students that you don't need to be a ~math whiz~ to do this work - you just need to learn how to ask the computer questions in an organized way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that we have Woke Trains in Canada, but I have never heard a more pointless land acknowledgement than the one they play on Via Rail. (Please enjoy my blurry photo of the progress Pride logo being displayed in March. Year-round rainbow Crown Corporation capitalism!)

Merci beaucoup à @geographieudem.bsky.social pour m’inviter comme participante de leur série EDI. I’ll take any excuse to hang in Montreal for the day, but this was a great opportunity to meet new colleagues and talk about how to do politics across differences, here and elsewhere.

hi, cis folks! it’s been a little over a month since the 2 biggest private hospitals in NYC ended trans youth care. some folks thought this was resolved with a judge’s ruling or a letter from the NYAG. care has *not* resumed! there’s a simple ask ⬇️ for you, if you’re willing to fight with us. 🧵

QT this with wizard schools (loosely defined) that are actually worth reading

So this is definitely a bad sign, but…the limit is 50 liters/day. My minivan has a 60 liter tank. The most popular car in Slovenia, a Renault Clio, has a 42L. The most popular car in Austria, Skoda Octavia, has a 50L. This is saying “no more than one tank of gas a day” which seems…fine?

Planning a work trip outside of North America when you're disabled means having to figure out whether that pretty and inexpensive hotel has an elevator and/or rooms on the ground or first floor. (The answer is no, almost always, so I'll be paying an extra €50-75 to stay somewhere with one.)

For anyone in Montreal, I'm giving a talk at @geographieudem.bsky.social at the end of March on what Palestinian experiences, in Palestine/Israel and in diaspora, can teach us about equity, diversity, and inclusion. Happy to grab coffee with other folks working on these issues while I'm in town!

1) Israel wanted the US to go to war with Iran. 2) the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump probably influenced Trump’s decision making. 3) some ppl in the US defense community think war with Iran will be good for Israel, which they think is good. 4) NONE OF THIS MEANS ISRAEL MADE US DO IT.

uOttawa is a great place to come spend a year (or a career). More than happy to talk to people considering these chairs.

TFW a student asks me if I've ever heard of AO3.

OK, #polisky folkswho work on democracy/democratization - what's the general attitude towards Freedom House scores? My sense is "overly simplistic and doesn't show its work" but if people on average think they're the best game in town I will be more generous with the thesis I'm currently marking.

OK so this young trans gentleman was cut off by his parents, has been unable to get MIT to up his financial aid, has been working multiple jobs while maintaining an A- average AT MIT (no one does this), but he is gonna need to actually pay his tuition to graduate: www.gofundme.com/f/help-matth...

This song feels incredibly relevant today.

Just finished The Trees by Perceval Everett. If you’d like your novels about the history of lynching and racial violence in America to be both incredibly hilarious and absolutely horrifying, this is the one.

I've been starting and stopping this essay for almost two years, but recent events made it seem urgent: On war. jude-doyle.ghost.io/the-rat/

Well, I've gotten through my research chair application yesterday and my grant notice-of-intent-to-apply documents for today, so now I'm going to eat preztels and read queer theory because I can.