If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.

This day.

I’m watching him completely unravel due to long term unemployment. He’s begging for work, for a chance, for money. The responses (or lack thereof) only serve to validate/exacerbate his distress. Is long term unemployment disabling, a disability, neither, or both?

Bonne nuit

Josef Sudek  was a Czech photographer. Originally a bookbinder, Sudek was badly injured during action by the Hungarian Army on the Italian Front of World War I in 1916. Although he had no experience with photography and was one-handed due to his amputation. Remarkable.

The advice was “get outside of your comfort zone” when I couldn’t remember the last time I was in one. What I needed, desperately, was comfort.

“Once the chaos goes beyond a certain stage, the only way to restore order is to identify a scapegoat. And the leader, any leader, is always a scapegoat-in-waiting.” — Giuliano da Empoli, The Hour of the Predator

Random Closed Openings in Rattray . Rattray, Blairgowrie, September 2025 . . #photography #urban #rural #derelict #abandondedplaces #nikon #ICantJustPullMagicOutOfAHat

“In my life, why do I give valuable time To people who don’t care If I live or die?” ~ The Smiths

“I was looking for a job And then I found a job And heaven knows I’m miserable now.” ~ The Smiths

I’d rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.

Dear eateries: your location, contact details, and opening hours should be on your landing page.

My article on 'cute surveillance' is now out Literature: Journal of C21st Writings 'Cute Surveillance: Embodiment, Subjectivity, and Intimacy in Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes' Open access here: c21.openlibhums.org/article/id/1...

Two excellent books on artists with similar feel. Francesca Woodman met and worked with Deborah Turbeville when she first came to New York The Phaidon book on Woodmans life and work is superb.

Years ago, I managed a law firm. I had to lock down our offices because a client had threatened to shoot one of our lawyers. Everyone complained about the “inconvenience” of my security measures, including the lawyer himself. I should have just put up a “this way 👉🏼” sign for the gunman.

Thinking about the importance of infographics. I really wanted to go off-roading, but since I was by myself I thought twice about it. The little skulls kept screaming at me: Don’t do it, you idiot! So I listened… this time. I’ll have to come back with a sidekick to get to the abandoned mines.

A man raging about having his AI prompts “stolen” is top tier absurdity. I love it.

“We’ll price you out of the choice we don’t want you to make, but you will always have a choice.”

I spent a lot of my early childhood quietly colouring in while my older siblings fought over large and small things.

Sketchbook page XI🎐 — watercolor + cyanotype Watercolor piece based on a reference image (artist unknown) #sketchbook #watercolor #fineart #cyanotypeart #photoart #sketchbookart #figurativeart #artbsky

“Facts and truth are not sociologically equivalent. The purpose of a lie is often to hide or misinform, but myth can be illuminating, informative and truthful while perhaps not being factual.” ~ Austin Lawhead, Anthropologist

Your ability to recall (in great detail) individual exceptions to the rule only serves to further prove the rule.

Reflection, Old St. Louis County Court House, Missouri, 1976. William Clift. Gelatin silver.

Chequerboards (flint, ashlar, brick), Winchester.

laughed out loud at a post on linkedin complaining that AI has made all the posts on linkedin "sound the same" sorry but that's not one you can totally blame chatGPT for

I still think it’s funny that almost all of us have one hand that’s just like yeah I don’t really know how to do anything 🤷‍♂️

Jenny Erpenbeck knows well what it is like to come of age in the wreckage of an empire. In “Things That Disappear,” she writes on ruins—and the virtue of unproductive places and idle things.

People getting excited about call recording and call annotation in smartphones fail to understand that it’s surveillance masquerading as a convenience. Especially now they have more real-time data to train AI with.

A wise litigator once said: “Never write anything down. Also, make sure you write everything down.”

A mediocre machine is also an improvement machine for a lot of people. And “a lot of people” is a lucrative market.

Whatever needs to be maintained by force is doomed. Henry Miller

By the time they’d agreed on the definition of key terms the problem had grown into a completely different shape and that shape brought with it a new language that required they take the time required to agree on the definition of key terms.

“For a house, the good thing is level ground. In thinking, depth is good. The good of giving is magnanimity; of speaking, honesty; of government, order. The good of work is skill, and of action, timing.” ~ Tao Te Ching

Les fleurs

that's a great question (me about the question i asked the moderator to ask)

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.” ~ w. whitman

Reminded of ecotones again today, so resharing one from the archives: www.whiteowl.net.au/blog/cougars...

Now I'm reading this: practicaltypography.com

“While we don’t have access to the answers, this poem is a beautiful place for the questions to live," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in episode 1393 of The Slowdown. Read “The Night Where You No Longer Live" by @meghanor.bsky.social: bit.ly/4qSoA6s 📖: @wwnorton.com

Kokeshi

Zero-carbon housing challenge launches Australia-wide

Tea. The answer to everything. :)

“Love is madness. If thwarted it develops fast.” ~ Mark Twain

Charrito (Pulquería), Mexico.. Edward Weston. Gelatin silver print.

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness. Baudelaire

“I’ll put the kettle on” is a completely reasonable response to bad news.

I’m off all Meta platforms now. I was never on FB or Messenger, I lasted five mins on Threads, and Insta ran second to LinkedIn (hibernated permanently) as an increasingly unhealthy comparison machine. X houses historical data of others that I still search, albeit less and less often.