Can confirm.

Both are calendar year and prorated as needed. Until recently, Cornell’s policy was 10 vacation days per calendar year, plus 13 university holidays. The grad student union negotiated for an increase to 12 vacation days in the contract signed in 2025.

To be clear: I like your policy! I might not put it on the web as some of the policies it is in tension with may have legal ramifications. And this illustrates some of the issues with treating PhD students as sort-of students / sort-of employees… work conditions depend on the advisor / lab culture.

At EPFL, all PhDs get 5 weeks of paid vacation, two of which must be taken consecutively, in addition to 9 public holidays. So 36 days in total! But I wouldn’t have known how to pull this off in the US…

I’m also curious: how do you square your group’s enlightened vacation guidelines with Cornell HR and/or effort certification on federal grants? Perhaps you fund part of every student on gift/discretionary funds to cover the difference?

Nice, but it seems confused on the definitions of assistantships at CU. For example, GRA != RA != GA. Also, the Grad School says "Hourly limits for GRA appointments are not explicitly defined..." vs. your "GRA and TA both represent a certain, bounded amount of work in terms of hours per week."

I had a great time watching @nines-conference.org presentations and talks with colleagues at Polimi and had a great and insight full discussion. I'm thankful both to great friends and NINeS organizing committee

In addition, we also have

- Contributed talks on a variety of topics.
- Talk videos for all of the accepted papers.
- A Discourse server where you can discuss all of this with others.

More information can be found at https://nines-conference.org/attend We hope you join us tomorrow.
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NINeS 2026 is tomorrow! We have just posted (at nines-conference.org/attend) details on how to join the livestream, which starts at 1am UTC, and will let you experience what is going on at several pods and also hear our keynotes. We hope you join us.

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February 10th, and thus the inaugural edition of NINeS is just around the corner. You can participate from anywhere in the world, at times that are convenient to you. See https://nines-conference.org/attend for information on how you can participate. We hope to see you on Feb 10th!

In either case, it’s difficult to quit!

COMMITTEE ON THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY | A Matter of Expectations: Universities and Their Evolving Relationship With Government and the Public The Committee on the Future of the American University looks at the long-standing but largely unspoken agreement that has shaped the relationship between Cornell and the federal government. Under this...

Meanwhile the FAU committee writes: “we must be willing to reflect on [critiques of higher ed] honestly”

www.cornellsun.com/article/2026...

🤦‍♂️

Yes.

CDMX!

You've heard of elf on a shelf, now get ready for...

TFW you name the final exam "F" ... which causes students to receive an email telling them they've received an "F" grade🤦‍♂️

Clearly de Bruijn is the way to go...

Now feels inappropriate given recent events, but thanks for appreciating!

This is awful. Glad to hear you and K are okay.

Twitter post from 2022

Real-life Twitter memes on a professional committee..

@shriram.bsky.social: “I just want to clarify my position, since I certainly don't want it misconstrued”

@natefoster.bsky.social: So… ?

Singaporean President visits downtown Ithaca’s cooperative craft shop - The Ithaca Voice ITHACA, N.Y. — Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam made a visit to Ithaca Thursday, making a few purchases at the Handwork Gallery on Cayuga Street while protected by a fleet of […]

Well I hope he didn’t eat any durian while he was browsing in the shop!

ithacavoice.org/2025/12/sing...

This is not a joke about CrowdStrike 😉

Congratulations to the CrowdStrike Software Update team for winning the 2025 FIFA Turing Award!

This dissertation is about using types for steaming computations. Speaking of streams, if you ever need to cross a stream, or find a life partner, you can do worse than the all-new Ford F150.

She had already rotated off!

FOSTER | "Any Person, Any Study," — If You Can Keep It In our guest room, Professor of Computer Science Nate Foster reflects on Cornell’s recent settlement with the Trump administration — a deal he argues trades principle for expedience.

I wrote a thing! Technically it’s an opinion piece but secretly it’s a love letter to Cornell.

www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

Statement on Cornell’s agreement with federal government The Cornell AAUP chapter has consistently stated that any deal with the Trump administration would be strategically unwise and a betrayal of Cornell’s principles. This remains the case. We ar…

Cornell AAUP statement on “the deal”

aaup-cornell.org/2025/11/07/s...

Good luck! (And great t-shirt Jeff :-)

Always remember to capitalize “mealy” when talking about automata or people will think you have an infestation.

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.