Big win for rhetorical hyperbole! #TeamRhetoric #tropes

Are you a student? Three easy things that will help you succeed in any class:

1) Read the syllabus.
2) Read assignment guidelines and rubric. Follow them.
3) NAME YOUR FILES (not Untitled 29).

i respect season 2 of the pitt for saying "ignoring your depression & trauma doesn't make you the sympathetic hero, it makes you a problem in the fucking workplace"

After current sexuality and gender studies majors and graduate students complete their teach-outs, “no degree-culminating student research within the TTU System will be permitted to center on SOGI topics,” the memo states. “Graduate theses and dissertations may only center on SOGI topics as a strictly temporary teach-out exception, explicitly limited to currently enrolled students completing their degrees within formally identified teach-out programs.”

The Texas Tech board and administration established ideological a gag order on what graduate students can study but so many university leaders will still parrot claims about a censorious liberal culture.

CODE MAROON at Texas A&M: Protect academic freedom and reject political control Texas A&M is ordering a philosophy professor to remove readings by Plato from his syllabus, per new rules requiring ideological review and approval of course content. This is not academic oversigh...

A group of A&M alums have formed Aggies Forward, a new alumni group advocating for academic freedom and institutional independence. Please sign and share this with alumni and allies -- and anyone you know who wants to protect free speech and academic freedom in Texas and across the country:

Tyranny at Texas Tech Academic freedom and the First Amendment must protect the right of anyone to disagree with the government.

Censorship regime at Texas Tech is too extreme for (checks notes) the American Enterprise Institute. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Letter April 12, 2026 April 12, 2026 Members of the Board of Regents, Chancellor Creighton, President Schovanec, and Provost Hendrick, The Executive Committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at ...

Letter from the TTU AAUP executive committee in response to the latest round of censorship and phase-outs of courses and programs. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Opinion | Beware conservatives promoting “intellectual freedom” Victor Ray: This conservative lie about schools like mine is furthering authoritarianism

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.

Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies Visit the post for more.

Some writing studies folks have popularized “AI refusal” as in the right to refuse it: refusal.blog

Christina Koch being greeted by her dog after returning from space is the dose of Monday hopium we all needed 💕

Hungary Has Ousted an Autocrat Viktor Orbán had support from Moscow and Washington, but not from his own people.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Magyar won with an emphasis on corruption and the rule of law. Good lessons. It wasn't just "we will improve the economy". It was "these people are stealing from you and we will put them in jail."

TTU AAUP Chapter - Join HISTORY of AAUP Events immediately before, during, and after its founding in 1915 helped to set the AAUP on its path as the primary defender of academic freedom in American higher education. Johns Hopkins University philosopher Arthur O. Lovejoy and Columbia University economist E. R. A. Seligman,

Here is another available option: www.ttuaaup.com/join

✊

Sophistic rhetoric treats language as a site of power, and one that should be democratized. And as teachers, that is precisely what the Sophists actually did.

The Sophists (and their inheritors--Cicero included) are buried under centuries of interpretation written by their political enemies: people who wanted political and rhetorical power concentrated in the hands of the few.

To be fair, Isocrates advertised his school of oratory--a competitor of Plato's Academy--in a pamphlet titled "Against the Sophists."

But it's very likely that Isocrates studied with the Sophist Gorgias. Attacking other "sophists" was a way of setting himself in a higher class.

I just saw an account named after Cicero complaining about "sophistry."

Cicero was called "The Greek" because of his admiration of Greek rhetoricians such as Isocrates.

Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window on April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II crew's flyby of the Moon. [Handout/NASA/Getty Images via AFP]

The Orion spacecraft, crescent moon and a crescent Earth on April 6, 2026. [Handout/NASA via AFP]

Earth sets over the moon's curved limb in this photo captured by the Artemis II crew during their journey around the far side of the moon. [Handout/NASA/Getty Images via AFP]

The Artemis II astronauts wrapped up their lunar flyby as they continue their journey back to Earth. [Handout/NASA via AFP]

New NASA 'Earthset' photo from Artemis II echoes Apollo 8's iconic 'Earthrise' in historic lunar flyby https://aje.news/xeitb1

Between the Impossible and the Inevitable: The Case for Defiance (aka Never F**king Surrender) I have been hesitating to hit send on this one, because across the world we are all under the shadow of Trump's threat to commit war crimes that will "eradicate a whole civilization" in Iran while Ira...

Claims we have no power to impact what happens are nevertheless an intervention in what will happen, by discouraging participation, by encouraging passivity, surrender, acquiescence. If you insist that a given outcome is inevitable, you are lobbying against resistance.

Keep in mind that Trump's threats communicated in his tweets are themselves war crimes.

Astronauts Dedicate Moon Crater to Carroll Wiseman, Wife of NASA Commander

Moon mission 🥺😭🥹

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/s...

Just saw this!

bsky.app/profile/cara...

Victor Glover posing (on earth) in an orange NASA spacesuit

Writing about Black place-and-space-making this morning for an upcoming talk and thinking about the Black space-making happening right now, over 200,000 miles from Earth, as Victor Glover pilots the Orion spacecraft toward the Moon.

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

Earth.

Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft after completing the translunar injection burn. There are two auroras (top right & bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun. 🧪🔭 #Artemis

www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

Idea: we should treat this place and each other with respect and care

That's home. That's us.

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew.

Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right.

Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Harrow the Ninth coming in hot with an Epiparados!

Happiness isn't one of the options! Go work on your book or something