Two summers ago I was at MoMA and this exhibit offered magnifying glasses and my mom—not really into art, dragged there by me, probably counting down the minutes until our lunch reservation—stopped and pored over every detail of each artwork. www.moma.org/calendar/exh...

hashtag history professor problems

I spend weeks in my history of technology class trying to convince my (mostly engineering) students that all human-made stuff is technology. Including Muppets, I suppose. When the original dunk-able post on this went around my first instinct was “CONDOMS.” And then “TAMPONS.”

hashtag history professor problems

S7E8. Briscoe and Curtis are interviewing the “philosophical and spiritual exploration guide” of a society-lady-suspect. He’s wearing a turtleneck that says “it’s nice to be nice” and petting a borzoi. He prefers “face-to-face communication” so Briscoe makes direct eye contact an inch from his nose.

This afternoon a student I had in Spring ‘25 stopped by my office. I love when this happens! We chatted for like ten minutes about his courses this semester, how he was helping a friend with their Bible study later today, etc. It was only about two minutes after he left that I remembered his name.

Broadly speaking, I prefer my Star Trek a little silly. It makes the imagined utopian(ish) future feel quotidian. Because life is a little silly! For every paradigm-shifting metaphysical question about life there has to be a store selling treats on a stick that no one really likes or whatever.

My niece (2 1/4 yo) has this picture book of dog opposites that she loves. Big dog/small dog. Etc. She especially loves the “long dog/short dog” page. For a while she slept with it open to the “long dog” page in her crib. So I made her this. It’s 5.5 feet long. The longest long dog.

I went to an all-girls school in the late 90s-mid 00s and everything was like “girls can be whatever they want! Scientists! Doctors! End of list!” The headmistress would say “if I had gone to this school, perhaps I’d be an astronaut.” As a Loves Science/Bad At Math kid, that was hard to process.

I know i’m a day and a half late, but I was at prime Tween Age for the Y2K “Latin revival” and I BEGGED my mom for Ricky Martin’s first English-language album (1999). It’s perfect. I learned so much Spanish from listening and reading the liner notes (a lost art). I’ll never not love Ricky Martin.

love colonoscopy discourse on main My paternal grandpa died young of colon cancer. My dad has two brothers and they would rotate whose city they’d do their colonoscopies in so they could prep together. I have fond memories of them acting like it was a slumber party when it was our turn to host.

S7E7 has Jerry Stiller (again!) as a lawyer (again!) but this time representing a man accused of killing his daughter’s ex-husband. The hook is that he (the lawyer) is incompetent and so finds a fast-talking lady lawyer to help who has history with ADA Jamie. It’s how we are introduced to ADA Jamie.

Slugger turns 5 today. This is a public service announcement that he is perfect and a good boy.

1. Media Law 2. Ancient Greek and Roman Literature 3. The Long 1960s in the United States 4. Principles of Arts and Culture Reporting 5. Imperialism (it was a poli sci class and I remember all the feedback on my homework was I needed to stop writing history papers. I was a journalism major.)

S7E4 has one of my favorite bits: Briscoe having to deal, Columbo-style, with some upper-crust world he simply can’t fathom. This time it’s fancy ancient coin collecting. “What, did Socrates use this to buy a kielbasa?” Briscoe asks of a collector trying to explain the allure to him.

There might have been a budget increase between S6 and 7. I can’t put my finger on what, but something feels different. Things look brighter, crisper. The storylines just a little more tabloidy. It’s acknowledged in very unsubtle ways that the ADA who replaces Claire (she DIED!) is hot.

Call me when Trans-Canada Air Lines turns 100 in 2037. Otherwise leave me and my research on the history of Canadian aviation and nation-building alone. I hate being relevant.

On my way to my car today, I walked past another faculty member who exclaimed: “Oh, you’re a Canuck!” I had never met this man. How could he know? Do I smell like maple syrup? Was I singing the Hip under my breath? My jacket is from Mountain Equipment Co-op. That’s how he knew. He’s from BC.

The S6 finale follows the gang after they watch a lethal injection (capital punishment was reinstated in NY in 1995). Curtis cheats on his wife by flirting with a gal played by Jennifer Garner, Claire self-destructs, McCoy is numb, Briscoe reunites with his daughter. It’s actually very well done.

S6E21 has King of Crazies Denis O’Hare as a schizophrenic lawyer who represents himself in court and Queen of Family Members With Ulterior Motives Ann Dowd as his sister with ulterior motives. (I said this wouldn’t be just celebrity spotting but I don’t want to focus on the Cop Stuff right now.)

I took a break from this but I’m back. S6E13 is a Homicide: Life on the Street crossover. It’s a damn shame they didn’t give Jerry Orbach and Richard Belzer a scene together. (regular reminder: one can be aware of the copaganda nature of L&O and still enjoy it as a piece of media.)

Not stable, paper clips, never used.

Here are some pictures of Slugger my mom sent me yesterday. I thought you might need them

Here are some pictures of Slugger my mom sent me yesterday. I thought you might need them

“Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws’,” was published in Technology and Culture in *1986*— that's *forty fucking years ago* people— & it was delivered as his (Kranzberg's) presidential address to the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) the year before that, so we're rolling up on 41…

🚨 RED ALERT 🚨 literally today the kennel did a Christmas photoshoot with the dogs here’s Slugger’s

my dad (a man) was very reluctant to get a small dog, especially the poodle my mom wanted. A convo they had at my house yesterday (Slugger is at a kennel that posts regular pics to their socials): Mom: Do you want to see some new pictures? Dad: Of [grandchild] or Slugger? M: Slugger. D: Oooooh!!!!!

also because of the amount of snacks everyone eats all the time

For my pre-tenure contract renewal I’ve been asked to reflect on my “use of technology” in the classroom. I *know* they mean “computers.” But the urge to share how I arrange the tables and chairs (technology) and an activity where students color with markers (also a technology) is very strong.

the 3d-printed e-spinner I asked for for the holidays arrived yesterday so prepare for me to be absolutely INSUFFERABLE with a new hobby

FACULTY grew too POWERFUL and too ROMANTIC??!? my brother in christ i cannot even afford a house or a car from this decade. the admin class is romanticizing the professoriate, otherwise we’d be paid what we’re worth.

All the reposts of this in my feed are so beautiful and evocative And I’m like “I committed the entire Peanut Butter Sandwich poem by Shel Silverstein to memory 25 years ago”

I’m partway through recording podcast episodes with the (mostly) first-year engineers in my history of technology class and despite all the Stuff—all the AI Stuff and academic freedom Stuff and other Stuff—it’s still such an honor to sit in a room with these young people and talk to them

This is a *great* book. I read a good chunk of it in one sitting at the Port Huron Border Patrol station because it took them three hours to process my work authorization and I was almost never bored. Get yourself a signed copy! (The times I was bored wasn’t on account of the book.)

Grad student instructors/TAs have SO little power. There’s a lot of things OU is good at, but…this…isn’t one of them. When I taught history of science at OU as a grad student it was just before the rise of the right-wing online outrage machine (2017-19) and I was terrified. I can’t imagine it now.

…that’s not enough food, isn’t? For a holiday based around feasting? My Thanksgiving this year was four adults and a toddler and we had probably 50% more food than this. Maybe there are, like, 6 pies and sweet potatoes and corn and a charcuterie tray off camera? (There aren’t.)

Not enough of you saw this embarrassing joke I thought of while doomscrolling last night, but the exact right person did:

“oh Hayley, does Clifford ‘Buzz’ Grambo sound like a real person to you? Grow up, it’s me.”

*sigh* one of the reasons people used to “dress up” to fly in the “good old days” of air travel was that the planes! Were not! Always! Fully climate-controlled! hashtag make america unpressurized again

I took a playwriting class as a teen and one of our exercises was doing this with our names. I wish I still had my poem, but it was about being outside and ended with “Real air is best.” The fact that I still remember it 20+ years later says something about the impact of the exercise!

my LMS grading platform keeps autocorrecting “academic writing” to “academic writhing” fair enough

overheard between two women in a college restroom: “[boyfriend and friend] dressed up as Tyler Durden and the Narrator from Fight Club.” “I’ve never seen that. I’ve heard of it!” “Yeah, I don’t know either.” …ah, Fight Club. Giving college-age men the wrong idea since 1999.

do NOT bring my beloved Ladies into this (ok but actually incredible though)

See, in the game show it wasn’t actually Carmen herself. It would be, like, Vic the Slick or Patty Larceny or those weird twins or whomever.

I don’t pretend to know anything beyond the Wikipedia basics about Adriano Celentano, but he brought us this, so

My niece turned 2 this weekend. Her favorite thing in the world is Shrek, and so I threw her a Shrek-themed party (mostly for all the millennial parents). I love making things for people. Here’s what I made. First, this banner for them to hang on the front door. It’s tapestry crochet!

I have two, both childhood foods of my dad: Montreal bagel, margarine, and a slab of halva, as a sandwich (vaguely understandable, since halva is basically sesame-based fudge) Kraft Dinner with cinnamon sugar on it (absolutely baffling, do not know the origins of this, eat for nostalgia only)

Go to the doctor. Go to the mountains. Look to the children. Drink from the fountains.

“Canada has never had a president,” I tell a group of students learning about the many ways that federal governments have intervened in telecommunications and transportation infrastructure “HOLY SHIT, NEVER?!” gasps one of my beloved first-year engineers who basically never says anything

We all know that being an adult is realizing that Benny isn’t the villain in RENT. Those guys should have paid their rent or whatever. Being an *academic* is realizing that Tom Collins was expelled from a job at MIT for being an anarchist and immediately got another one at NYU somehow.