Did I just argue with a joke? Part of a Bluesky educational series

Where Physics Meets Poetry: On Language and the Power of Metaphor When I was 16 years old, my beloved college counselor told me that it was a good thing I wanted to be a physicist because I wasn’t much of a writer. We were close—I had her home phone number for em…

Cool piece in @lithub.com.web.brid.gy by @chanda.blacksky.app about the perils of metaphor in #scicomm. I think about this a lot! Figurative language has such power to captivate and make the strange more understandable...but can also lead us astray. #science lithub.com/where-physic...

We may be inching closer to the Butlerian Jihad

Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom of Speech’

The United States should abolish the presidency and become a parliamentary democracy

THE NLRB GRANTED OUR ELECTION PETITION! USC non-tenure-track faculty will FINALLY get to vote on our union in April!

Portland State declares financial crisis, reveals plan to cut or reduce 19 departments Portland State’s announcement Monday lays the groundwork for a process that could result in a massive restructuring of the university.

Despite Portland State faculty & staff securing $311M in higher ed funding, reducing Oregon’s higher ed cuts from 5% to 0%, PSU admin move forward in enacting worst cuts in its history. Why?

@psuaaup.bsky.social

If science is so great why do we only have one vegetable on the cob

Community meme: I CAN EXCUSE FASCISM. BUTI DRAW THE LINE AT MERCANTILISM.

The Supreme Court:

Ah, yes: Julian versus Gregorian

This accurately captures the terror and bewilderment I feel every time I get an email

Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich

Literally a publication for eight-year olds 40 years ago

Teachers in school: you can’t trust Wikipedia

Me today: you can only trust Wikipedia

I would give anything to hear a scholastic philosopher explain the metaphysical stakes of this situation.

Banqueting Stuff 113 ters with Indigenous peoples, begins with fruitfulness and "civility" but ends with dearth and mortality. The list of food opportunities is replaced by a final page with daily records of deaths. The interlopers consider their first extended contact with the Algonquian very promising because it consists of a meal and "entertainment" that follows an order seemingly recognizable to the Europeans, complete with status hierarchy: elites seated by rank; the serving of "dainties", 94 an after-the-meal treat (in this case, tobacco); and a final performance, which the captain rewards with a gift. Even if religion and warfare practices remain mysterious, this hospitality is a moment of promise for the prospective set-tlers. Rendered familiar, Algonquian hospitality is, for Percy, a harbinger of future amity. Their ordered meal suggests an ordered society with an attention to rank that matches the English, similarities that suggests them as potential allies. And, indeed, the first years of settlement were relatively peaceful, and food became both a source of and a means of communicating conflict.'5 For several days, the party visits a range of Indigenous communities; Percy's description of his dealings is shot through with a sense of wonder until he reaches Paspahegh territory: the encounter begins with the promise that their leader "would be merry with us with a fat Deare."9 That initial promise is followed by other promises and signs of friendship, but Percy's account alternates between paradisal appraisals of the land and mutual accusations of threat and trickery. The colonists are sent a deer in a stately fashion, but, by the time of its arrival, Percy's suspicion is evident, "[He] sent forty of his men with a Deere, to our quarter: but they came more in villainy than any love they bare vs."'7 He concludes, though, that "Pasphia was as good as his word; for hee sent Venison, but the Sawse came within few dayes after."98 Nonetheless, the encounter is wr…

My book, *Sweet Taste of Empire* is a Thanksgiving book (kinda) It teaches much about the dynamics of hospitality & the meanings of the foods on your plate. as in this discussion of George Percy’s description of being fed by an Algonquian leader:

A University Gets Dinged for Failing to Involve Faculty in Budget-Cut Talks An arbitrator says Portland State must reinstate 10 faculty members who were laid off.

“Going forward, there’s a lot of pressure on the university to respect shared governance and to at least generate … buy-in from faculty for any decisions that are made."

- Bill Knight, AAUP Portland State University

@psuaaup.bsky.social

Shakespeare in the Kitchen Audiences and scholars alike have long remarked that Shakespeare’s poems and plays record the pleasures and perils of the table. Shakespeare in the Kitchen asks what Shakespeare’s works can tell us ab...

It’s all happening: Shakespeare in the Kitchen is slated for publication in April 2026 🍽️📗🎉 www.routledge.com/Shakespeare-...

This is great news. AAUP's arbitration win and our adjunct union's unfair labor practice victory will hopefully force Portland State's administration to back down from its anti-labor agenda www.opb.org/article/2025...

Portland State University AAUP won their arbitration regarding the layoffs of 10 non-tenure track faculty!✊

An arbitrator ruled the university bypassed shared governance protocols required by the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

All 10 laid-off faculty must be reinstated!

@psuaaup.bsky.social

We’ve Defied President Nyarlathotep’s Psychic Siege Long Enough Well, everyone, it was a valiant and brave endeavor. We refused to capitulate during the Dread Lord Nyarlathotep’s nationwide psychic siege for ove...

"It was a heady few days, that’s for sure. But we now face a critical crossroads: Do we allow the rising tide of animus to continue to swell against the jackboots of these rancid, grotesque husks of humans? Or do we think the death cultists learned their lesson?"

Much has been said about the lackluster literary merits of early SF, but I'd argue that the greatest aesthetic sin of EE Doc Smith's Skylark of Space (1928) is that we don't find out until half way through his interplanetary adventures that the hero's had on a Hawaiian sport shirt the whole time

I'm 2/3rds of the way through Phlebas and thoroughly enjoying it. It's a fascinating counterpoint to traditional space opera narratives

Still from Monty Python and the Holy Grail with dialogue caption "I told you. We're an anarcho-syndacalist commune."

A digital poster in the style of a World War II propaganda piece. Isolaed on a yellow background, a normal, squarish, 20-something guy with glasses is sitting working on a laptop. A ghostly figure of Hitler has his arm around the guy and is grinning and shaking a fist triumphantly looking at the laptop screen. On the lid of the laptop where an apple might otherwise be is an openAI logo, bright green, and dripping green ooze down the lid. Text on the poster, in combinations of sans-serif type and brush script reads: Using Generative AI? You’re prompting with Hitler! GenAI is a Fascist Project! Try using your brain instead Don’t surrender your creativity to the tech billionaire’s control

New awareness campaign

With only a few days left on the court-ordered deadline, Portland State admin *still* has not released the hardship funds to affected adjunct faculty members

Portland State University violated labor law, state employment board rules The Oregon Employment Relations Board has ordered PSU to release certain funds to members of the university’s adjunct faculty union.

In case you missed it, administrators at my university have been illegally holding hardship assistance for vulnerable adjunct faculty members hostage since July in a scheme to weaken our union. Thanks to the bravery and solidarity of the people affected, we were able to fight back and win

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness.

Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

Melvyn Bragg decides to step down from presenting In Our Time After 26 years on the programme, the legendary presenter bids farewell to the series

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

IDW scabbing is still scabbing