The US Forest Service proposed a logging project adjacent to Yellowstone National Park on Forest Service land near Jardine MT. The Forest Service prepared a Preliminary Effects Document and a map of the project area. Public comments are due by June 1st and can be submitted at […]

Things that I know aren’t true but believe anyway: REM and Wilco are the same band, just 20 years apart. #REM #Wilco #music

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/116573602151142768 Somehow, this is the most British thing I’ve ever heard.

Someone (sorry it's buried now) sent me this article in response to my "I need to finally start working out" post, and it is far & away the most helpful, illuminating thing I've read on the subject. Highly recommended -- really cuts through the noise.

So panels that were optimistically rated for 230 watts 15 years ago are still spitting out about 200 watts without much effort at all! This is FANTASTIC because even though panels hold up way better than I expected, **rich buggers still replace them** because you can get 400 or 500 watt panels […]

“Photographer Spends Night on Freezing Mountain to Capture Rare Triple Galaxy Arch” - astonishing photo and interesting how-it-was-done narrative. https://petapixel.com/2026/05/08/photographer-spends-night-on-freezing-mountain-to-capture-rare-triple-galaxy-arch/ #photography

My mid-semester anti-AI ranting and raving seems to have worked! I’ve now marked two classes worth of final papers and only had one that smelled like robot feces. 🙂 Still planning to rework my process / policies around writing assignments over the summer. #teaching #grading

Life hack: I’ve got ChatGPT tuned up to my voice and praying for me at a rate of thousands of petitions per second. Gonna have the blessings rolling in no time and sweet heaven when I die. So much praying, so efficient. And I get to skip all the “thinking of what to say,” and “my knees hurt,” […]

I am immediately suspicious of educational "tools" that claim to help by getting in between my students and me My students and their learning aren't nuisances nor are they widgets. I do not need a dashboard. The friction is the work Grading is a problem not because it lacks sufficient […]

Grading final exams. I can reassure those of you who worry about this sort of thing that Gen Z has not abandoned cursive. …but maybe they should.

[Good] I made saag from scratch this evening. I’m sure that I botched by the standard of anyone’s Indian grandma, but it hit the spot as far as my Barbadian standards are concerned. The chopping is the only step that takes real time… probably Mae it again soon.

[mh, piss poor mood.] Grumpy as hell at the moment. And hurt. And lonely. Feel like all the people who are closest to me, the people that I care the most about, are all doing their best to avoid spending time with me as much as possible. And my brain is in a place where I don’t blame them […]

Dogs’ reactions when you ask them if they want a walk.

Peak spring! #silentsunday #bloomscrolling

Michael Hanby, a professor at the John Paul II Institute at the #catholic University of America, rejects the classification of #ai as a mere tool, noting that AI shapes its users in ways they don’t always choose. He told me he’s less concerned with an AI apocalypse than with how “our immersion […]

I don’t think I have any followers in Helena, but I’m playing a gig on Thursday and stoked about it!

My daughter’s soccer team is playing a tournament in Pocatello, Idaho this weekend. So on the drive down, I started brainstorming restaurant names… If I were going to start a barbecue joint here, it would have to be called Porkatello. But my favorite was my idea for a Vietnamese soup […]

tired: soy boy wired:

Students paying thousands of dollars to come close to getting educated, but swerve and dodge it just in time! And I get it! Reading is actually hard. Thinking is hard. And writing involves both reading and thinking. It’s hard! But education is also training for the hard parts of being a human […]

[Teacher… still ranting.] Oooof… discouraging day of teaching. After the stuff I ranted about earlier, and a dept meeting 🙄, I suspect that over half of the papers I just graded were ai generated. Why am I spending time trying to educate kids who don’t actually want to learn new ideas or new […]

Woooo! In my feelings a little bit. Angry (?) because I have students who don’t do the reading, but turn up rolling their eyes at the questions I’m asking in class, like the things I’m saying are obvious and dumb. The anger comes, I think, from the combination of laziness, entitlement, and […]

Today, my life has been improved by learning there is/was (?) a female impersonator who performs as Elvis Herselvis.

there's a reason that there are different distances in track---the 400m is hard, sure, and the mile is hard, yes, but they are different events!

But here's the thing: a 500-word paper is a very different exercise than even a 750-word paper, not to even talk about 1000 words

One of the best pieces of editing advice, ever, comes from Spooky Grandpa: your new draft is your old draft minus 10% of the word count. It's hard, but it really does transform things

1. In a landmark ruling, the Montana Supreme Court has declared that the constitution, one of the most progressive in the nation, entirely protects transgender people. The ruling is even insulated from SCOTUS decisions, due to how state constitutions work. Subscribe to support our journalism.

The US President is praising Allah and the President of Iran is defending the Pope. Welcome to 2026.

And, now it is time for my semi-annual reminder: if you are an associate prof and you haven't started thinking about promotion yet, today is the day to start thinking And you start by making a little spreadsheet of the people who have come up in your unit or adjacent units recently

Do not, under any circumstances, think of pink elephants.

I got locked in painting today. Not sure I’ve ever done four hours straight! I finished the underpainting a couple days ago and did the whole sky today. #painting #trees #mountain #workinprogress

Here’s a screen shot from an article served up on Apple News. And a really good reason not to let AI write for you… Or at least, AI is my best explanation, ala Hanlon’s Razor, for why an article refers to Israel as “the Zionist entity” on its very first mention, no […] [Original post on mas.to]

[Hot take: Language learning] YouTube is full of great language learning content, but I am fed up with clickbait videos titled DON'T SAY (basic word). NATIVE SPEAKERS NEVER SAY IT. I am not a native speaker. No one thinks I am a native speaker. Look, my pronunciation is already too good for […]

God love him… I have a colleague who will print off an email and walk the paper to my office to let me read it and then ask how I’d like to respond. I know this person well enough to know that they are trying to get their social needs met through collegial relationships… and I try to be kind […]

RE: https://mastodonapp.uk/@PoliticalCartoon/116286039742741015 Whatever clever point this cartoon is making about Trump’s misunderstanding about talks… …sure seems like there’s a way to make the point without dehumanizing and calling on quasi-racial anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Hmmmmm… an account that joined mastodon yesterday and is already following 5200 people? Looked legit otherwise, but I don’t need another bot on my tail.

I have a rash of AI written papers in the stack I’m grading. ☹️ The assignment is a historical critical analysis of two ancient texts. Besides the not-an-undergrad writing style, the giveaway on these AI parts relative to the gospel of Mark is that all of these parts use the same three passages […]

A small thing making me happy this spring: The Northern Flickers in my neighborhood (think: woodpecker’s cousin) have figured out that if they rap their bills on the top of the street lamps it makes a great noise that travels far. They seem to be using it as a […] [Original post on mas.to]

key studies: Foundational: Schmitt's The Holy Greyhound : Guinefort, healer of children since the thirteenth century: archive.org/details/holy... most recent: Stephen J. Molvarec, "Canes domini? 'Saint' Guinefort, popular devotion, hierarchies, and animalité." www.routledge.com/Companion-Sp...

It's as if this High Scholastic Theologian is trying to squeeze everything into the framework that fits his training. He's doing his level best. But the story gets away with him (he tells it so well!); and the *events*, at their core, deny what he's trying to do to discard poor Guinefort, so brave!

But what happens to the family? SOMEHOW their castle is ruined, their land made a wasteland. Stephen denies the miraculous when for animals. Denies the heroism of a dog. Denies it anything but the status of a tool. But the events say different. There's a miracle! A punishment! God says otherwise!

But he tells the Guinefort story with such brio! Until the moment when he speaks of the family grieving because they had killed an animal that was 'tam utilem' (so useful). Utilem is the same root as 'utensil.' We might expect loyal, or brave! But instead we get this shoddy, 2-bit refusal of a word.

My teaching focused on the tensions between story's events and Stephen's account: what if we take this Parisian theologian as an unreliable narrator? He tells the story as part of an invective against superstition. There are, he says, no omens, no visions, plenty of scams. Animals are just animals

A local cult springs up around the dog. His place of death becomes a shrine to heal children. And we know about this not just bc the unjustly killed dog story is VERY widespread, but also bc a 13th-c inquisitor, Stephen of Bourbon, recorded the cult before stamping it out. +

Dog kills snake, blood's everywhere, cradle's overturned, nurse comes home, sees bloody dog, no baby, screams. Wife comes home, Screams. Knight comes home, SCREAMS. And kills dog. And only *then* do they find the dead snake, and the unharmed baby. Grieving, they throw the dog's body in a well.

Ok, here's the story itself: sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/guine... If you don't know: Guinefort is the Holy Greyhound, the dog saint. Near Lyon, a knight and his household are out, the baby's in the cradle at home, alone with their dog, Guinefort. A snake shows up, intending to mess up the baby

[Food] I’ve been messing around making pizza from scratch every couple weeks. It’s getting better! I may never be able to overcome my “too many toppings” urges though. #pizza #cooking