I wrote a tiny LaTeX package that creates a wordcount environment. You can use it to auto-print word counts, when paring down text to meet limits. For example: \begin{wordcount}{\abstractcount} This is my abstract. \end{wordcount} \textbf{Word count:} \abstractcount % prints 4 Source code below…

This is the height of corruption. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

Students, every year, in evaluations: We liked that he had us take handwritten notes in lecture. I could focus better. College administrators: You kids want some AI? How about a second computer? What if the walls were also screens?

“There’s no use building railways in North America. The cities are just too far apart. Face reality: we need planes and cars!” Here’s a map of Spain’s high-speed network overlaid on the Midwest, with #Madrid in the place of #Chicago.

i had the same thought when i got the email

One more thought: what if the internet-fueled participatory propaganda cycles — and those who know how to exploit them — are really good at garnering attention, harnessing grievance, and tearing down things (trust, institutions, USAID, the WH's east wing, etc.) but really bad at actually governing?

Not only does telling a chatbot ‘do not hallucinate’ misunderstand how LLMs works, the idea that they are capable of following instructions is an illusion. At best, this just adds text to the context that may cause them to go down one path rather than another. But they don’t literally obey commands.

After a trip using the Paris Metro, London Underground, the Eurostar Chunnel train, and rail systems in France and the UK, I know I’ll likely never see an equivalent transit system in the US for most cities or national travel. This article helps explain why. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Those microplastics from tires and such don’t just pollute & prematurely kill us. They’re also fuelling the climate crisis. Scientists found that “tiny, colored plastic particles absorb sunlight as winds blow them around the world, trapping heat and contributing to temperature rise.” #ClimateCrisis

4/ how to organize their thoughts and form well supported arguments. My guess is that the writing being done in classrooms isn't going to accomplish those goals. And if sufficient time & effort is being spent to make that happen, that means many other classroom goals will be forfeit. Students, and

🎮 Do you know any *good* theories for making games? 🎮 Share your thoughts in our survey res58.itu.dk/limesurvey/I... Whether you are a game dev, scholar, educator, or blog about games. @dooleymurphy.bsky.social and I would love to hear from you! 🌟 Thanks for participating and reposting! 🌟

"sing, O muse" is 100% the ancient Greek translation of "ok, buckle up, storytime"

Welcome to the last half of the US federal fiscal year. Here is where we're at with National Science Foundation--the agency that funds basically everything other than biomedical research at American universities--grant numbers. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

I’m a President now. @acog.org @acogd2.bsky.social

Today was the first day of the 5th Avenue open street in Park Slope and as soon as the barriers went up it was FILLED with people. New York needs to think even bigger. Like Paris bigger.

“Ever found yourself driving to the grocery store or coffee shop even tho it’s a 10-minute walk & perfectly nice day? New research suggests the reason isn’t just distance—it’s how the walk feels…its the sights, street life & amenities along the way that strongly shape whether people decide to walk.”

As we would do and have done if was trains, planes or guns we must change vehicle design and controls to make this impossible. The products of Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, Seat, Mercedes, Ford, Nissan, Vauxhall, Audi, Skoda etc etc are directly killing over ten million people per decade in collisions...

Anti bike lane neighbors have stepped up their efforts to kill the lane, including getting my building’s board involved (without, of course, surveying the residents first). They included a note that we should write to our councilwoman. So I did.

a tv show in the style of THE PITT, focussed on universities, called THE ACADEMY. each hour of the show everybody just gets increasingly annoyed about administrative bullshit

A spin on the now famous @tomflood.bsky.social tagline “15-minute cities: I like running into friends.”

Even if this were a good idea, which it really, really isn’t, the university rightly doesn’t collect this data. How would it comply? Make assumptions about last names? Penn and all others asked to do same must refuse. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

"Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial: Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later."

This is great news, but it nicely illustrates that, just like for science, nothing can replace government funding. NPR got a one-time gift totaling $113 million, which is not nothing. But Congress clawed back $500 million in annual funding from public broadcasters.

Seeing lots of papers at #CHI2026 still using online survey tools... not sure if we can still do that.

@parastooabtahi.bsky.social hiii! :)

The CHI Papers Explorer is back for #CHI2026! As every year, you can explore all 2,769 papers using semantic search. Type any topic, see papers ranked by relevance, and build your schedule. Try it and please share with everyone heading to Barcelona: johnguerra.co/viz/chi2026P... @chi.acm.org #HCI

The ACM CHI 2026 paper program is live on the ACM Digital Library, so please enjoy all the new 1702 pieces of science that #CHI2026 has for you: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi... (cc @acm_chi ). p.s.: You can read our welcome message at dl.acm.org/action/showF...

“With many newspapers closed, and no clear path for local public libraries to preserve digital-only reporting, the work of safeguarding journalism’s record increasingly falls to the Internet Archive,” reads a letter of support signed by over 100 working journalists.

Making tenure count, for MSNOW I wrote about my employer, The University of Iowa, creating a center for intellectual freedom. It's a reactionary project built on decades of conservative propaganda about higher ed.

France 🇫🇷 doubles electrification support to €10bn/year through 2030 — EVs, heat pumps, industry. The reason? The Strait of Hormuz crisis making fossil fuel dependence impossible to ignore. Geopolitical shocks don’t just raise prices. They change what’s politically possible.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

i don’t want my appliances to be smart or connect to the internet. i want them to do one mechanical task for 100 years

If google gave a shit about their users, the top hits for any hotel wouldn't be sketchy intermediary booking sites. It's a perfect example of enshittification.

The European Union is tightening the regulatory backdoor through which US automakers have been quietly importing around 7k large SUVs and pickup trucks/year. “The revised rules, expected to launch in 2027, are designed to close loopholes that Brussels says allow unsafe vehicles onto European roads.”

TL;DR of this article: Old people want young people to suffer for their own convenience. mass.streetsblog.org/2026/04/09/i...

EMERGENCY RELEASE from Gen. Eaton.

🧵Congress 202-224-3121 Find your Senators www.senate.gov Find your Rep www.house.gov "I'm [NAME] from [PLACE, ZIP]. I'm calling to urge the Senator/Rep to contact Adm. Correll & remind him that he has the same legal obligation as any soldier to refuse an illegal order from this Commander in Chief."

Coming to #chi2026? Come socialize with others and think about how we reflect on our practice of HCI! 15 April 2026 @ 4:30 PM local time www.meta-hci.org

Please join us at #CHI2026 to think about community + connection! Bring your own crafts + we will have some provided.

𝑪𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝑰 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑 𝒖𝒔 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝒄𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆? In our new #CHI2026 paper, we studied how AI assistance affects close reading poems — not just how well people interpret poems, but also the pleasure derived from close reading. closereading-ai.app #AI #HCI #closereading #humanities #culture #poetry (1/13)

Also, Montréal HCI is hiring! Looking for one PhD student (~Winter 2027). Also looking for stats/coding collaborators for our LLM evals project (the latter, can be anyone—doesn't matter as long as you know your stuff!). See us at CHI and say "bonjour hi"! 5/5

Paper 2: "Reporting and Reviewing LLM-Integrated Systems: Challenges and Considerations." An interview study of how authors report systems with LLM components, and how reviewers grill them, with guidelines for HCI scholars when reporting LLM components in HCI papers. 🧵 3/5

First up: "How Notations Evolve: A Historical Analysis with Implications for Supporting User-Defined Abstractions." A historical analysis of notational systems, from quantum circuits to dance notations to SignWriting, with implications for abstraction co-creation. 🧵 2/5

The STAR workshop at #CHI2026 is just over a week away! Due to increased interest, we're capping our open-door attendance at 100. To make sure everyone interested in the workshop has a spot, please sign up below. 📝 Register: forms.gle/28U2RySizboW... 🌐 Details: chi-star-workshop.github.io

i just think Watering Flowers While Black should not be an arrestable offense nor do i think this should be controversial ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

"Under Bondi, in the first six months of Trump’s administration, DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, fraud, and drugs..." www.propublica.org/article/trum...

This is so, so well-articulated.

May I be 106 and still have my shit together like this.

Google is now screwing with the 10 blue links in traditional search and rewriting headlines - including ours - to be the worst kind of slop. This sucks so bad www.theverge.com/tech/896490/...

A manufacturing problem in millions of Abbott glucose sensors for diabetes patients has been tied to at least seven deaths and hundreds of injuries worldwide. on.nbcboston.com/9xkryjX

Officials are normally presented with ceremonial swords or paintings or whatever. But these guys are so fucking stupid that foreign intelligence agencies can literally give them an "Honorary Electronic Communications Device for a Very Special Boi" and they fall for it every time.