No one expects "enjoy solving math problems" to be the primary objective of a college math class, but a lot of folks seem to think the point of English classes is to love the act of reading. If you want to read a book for pleasure, read! If you want to be taught a skillset, take a class.

That’a right, Philadelphia brought you the price tag

Sometime last week, I mentioned having given a paper about tuning conspiracy theories and solfeggio tones at a conference. I spent some time turning it into a blog post, and you can read it here: www.williamohara.net/blog/2026/2/...

Imagine dismissing a journalist who wants to write compelling stories as hopelessly naive. "Many graduating [journalism] students have unrealistic expectations. They imagine themselves as long-form magazine storytellers, chasing a romanticized version of journalism that largely never existed."

I'm in New Delhi for the #AIImpactSummit, the first of these global convenings to be held in the Global South. That matters a great deal. And yet: Whose voices shape the agenda? Which communities are centered ? Which are displaced? The contradictions are as visible and important as the ambitions.

This thread is the we are going to win thread, is the kids are alright thread, is the STOP ICE thread, is the civil society rising thread; read it through.

I think it’s very useful for members of the media to see ourselves through the lens of the people impacted by the terrible things they live though crcvc.ca/wp-content/u...

Sweden curling set up a sting operation to catch Canada cheating i’m fucking losing it

You will never run out of reasons to continue masking. A grocery store hasn’t seen my whole face since before 2020 because as a former theatrical lighting tech and near-sighted person with an astigmatism, I’ve almost always have my sunglasses on indoors.

A.C. Gilbert, the American inventor who created the Erector Set & other educational toys, was born #OnThisDay in 1884. Perhaps the most (in)famous of Gilbert's creations was the Atomic Energy Lab, which let kids perform over 150 exciting experiments w/radioactivity! #histSTM #histsci #physics ⚛️🗃️📜

Morning all. Photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. Cat crossing the street, Byker, 1974.

production of The Muppet Show should not be dependent on petty vulgarities like “ratings” or “revenue.” it should be preserved as a vital function of american culture. it should have a taxpayer-funded budget rivaling the CIA

I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.

My neighbour here in 🇨🇦 , love it to death

Until then here's images of the insides:

I got a fidget puzzle (jointed plastic chains that you bend into different shapes). It's helping. I should go back to knitting but since the moths ate my best work I haven't had the heart. Or start treating the piccolo as my busy-bee toy.

In seriousness though my new ukulele habit has effectively kept me from scrolling; it’s easy enough to carry around and keep my fingers busy so I don’t reflex default to checking my phone

calling it that from now on

I also owned Rubáiyát and aside from the 10,000 Maniacs cover of "These Days" this was my hand-down favorite track on it: youtu.be/ZmlW5544fhw

One of my ice breakers for tech conferences is "what's the part of your job you wish you could stop doing"? 60% say meetings, and the remaining 40% will reliably say "maintaining someone else's code". And baby, it's going to get a lot worse! 👇🧵

Good coding practices thread

a neighbor set up this werewolf for halloween and instead of taking it down they just update it with seasonal outfit changes. now it’s dressed for valentine’s day and holding a sign with a picture of bad bunny and his super bowl slogan. i love him.

Think slavery doesn't matter today? Wrong. Current Congress members whose families owned 16+ enslaved people now have 4 million $ more than members who did not own slaves. Slave owning = 2024 money and influence 🧪 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

"How long diseases like measles and the flu linger in the air — after an infected person has left the room" RSV: up to 45 mins Influenza: at least 1 hr Rhinovirus: 1-2 hrs Measles: up to 2 hrs Norovirus: up to 2 hrs COVID-19: up to 3 hrs Chickenpox: several hrs Mumps: several hrs TB: 6-12 hrs

hey by the way if you want to be fucked up for the rest of the day, I saw a statistic once that the number of gay men in Florida who died of AIDS was something like 10x or 20x the number of Florida votes the 2000 election was decided by we don't know what world we'd be living in if they were here

and once again: student-run papers are the free press now www.michigandaily.com/news/former-...

🇺🇦💡 For the first time in a long time, Kyiv is almost completely powered — 95% of the capital without outages this evening

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

I just learned that it has apparently rained in the UK every day of 2026 so far and whew, I’d lose my mind.

🇺🇸 Monitor your voter registration status 🇺🇸 Sign up for notifications of your ballot status 🇺🇸 Vote as early as possible 🇺🇸 Promptly address any failure to receive a ballot, or being removed from the voter rolls 🇺🇸 ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT VOTING

Sometimes I feel like the only professor who hates having physical books in the house. Once I'm done with writing my own book, I empty the shelves to make room for books for the next project. If I can, I just buy on Kindle. I do not want to pay a mortgage on books. I also want to relax at home.

I don't even want to know how they know this.

this was a regular debate in a sociolinguistics reading group I belonged to (with a side order of reverse accent discrimination)

looking for recommendations of someone who can rebuild a Dreamhost-hosted WordPress site from a database

And I expect you all to know which is which without peeking at the answers. (Unless, of course, you can't see the pictures, in which case you get a pass.)

You can go outside and also get a taco (recommended)

There's no way to explain why I find Rothko's paintings so moving and I know they don't do it for everyone. I once took a girlfriend to the Tate and when I showed her the Rothko room, she pronounced them "crap." So you could say it's subjective and yet, why do so many people feel the same as I do?

TIL that's why it's called an amphitheater

“Let us love the stranger among us, for we are them and they are us.” @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social weaves the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, and a Muslim hadith into a message that will endure however the current regime tries to discredit it. As Paul wrote, we are treated as impostors and yet are true.

For folks here who enjoy speaking Yiddish or reading Yiddish or just looking at Yiddish, we've got a bluesky feed for that!

also I would be remiss if I did not reference @katebeaton.bsky.social’s legendary comic when discussing a book by one of the Brontës

The amount of Epstein info the federal government had is closer to 50 TB of data, new FBI emails show. Bombsell: Only 2 percent of Epstein files have been released by DOJ www.alternet.org/epstein-file...

“AI giant Anthropic ran a massive program called Project Panama where they spent tens of millions of dollars to hoover up used books, which they then sliced, scanned, and pulped.”

I did a research project just to watch the bad bunny halftime show. I need lyrics, set to the tune, with maybe some different interpretive dances. Then I printed out the translations for the choruses WITH phonetic spellings in the Spanish so I could sing along. It is what it is. I am what I am.

and Mamdani probably only got away with not being in STEM because his mom was already a film major

So a true story: the moving company is charging us a “library surcharge” because we have “too many books,” which frankly I find both credentialing and insulting.

The awfulness of the first sentence here is obvious. As for the second sentence, I don't think they do and I don't think they do.