LexLibrarian

If there are multiple timelines, I hope some version of me gets to live in a better one.

I know everyone is stewing in misery. However. We made it to the end of February. The snow is melting. Soon, another class will be graduating (including that one student who hates me). The cracks are starting to show everywhere. Most people know more than they did a year ago. We can do this.

I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to support your daughter through this and to have to keep being Normal Dad. Wishing--and firmly believing in--many good things ahead for you and your family.

Y'all didn't tell me that they were searching Sandringham and Windsor. If there's one thing I know about the old money rich--and I have known many rich people--it is that they are often packrats who don't clean up after themselves.

I feel like what we need to do is line up in support of something none of us care about it all. Then they can spend the next 10 months focused on abolishing highway billboards or something.

I know we're in the here and now, but can we talk about Merrick Garland again? I know the assumption was that he was a do-nothing moderate, but I am really beginning to doubt that characterization.

I think it would be nice if universities ever had clear, concise messaging around emergencies/unexpected events. I have students showing up to old Zoom office hours links (thinking that it's virtual class?). I have people asking me whether there's class tomorrow. I don't know! I don't know anything!

I've spent much of the day watching people join our side. And the fact that the response of much of Bluesky is "Yeah? What were their feelings on XYZ?" So fucking stupid. I have a staunch Republican missionary cousin with half-African children. She came over to our team today. I will take her vote.

The press pool needs to learn to collaborate like everyone else. Someone gets a trash answer/insult and you get the next question? You follow up on theirs. You make the room hostile with the knowledge that your only hope of breaking real news in that environment is to get the mask to slip.

Yesterday, the Times had one of those "we talked to 8 losers" pieces. They were elated, thrilled with about T hurting people. There are no hearts and minds to win. All you can do is drive them underground through ostracism. So tired of the "if they only understood..." line of argument. They get it.

The single most toxic thing Dem strategists/pundits believe is that no one is talking or listening to rural America. Jesus, no one will shut up about them. Thanks to the NY Times, I know more about a patchwork of dying steel towns than I do about the millions of people in my own metro.

I think I would feel better if people would acknowledge they are not okay. I mean, REALLY not okay. On the worst night of the week, I am going to acknowledge that for myself in case anyone else is feeling the same. I see you and I'm sorry and we deserve better than being afraid all the time.

They Were Part of the Biggest Measles Outbreak in a Generation

WTF is this? Are we a newspaper, NYT? Do we do reporting? Glad the kid is in The Nutcracker; too bad for the 95,000 people globally who died from measles in 2024 (WHO). www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

Lab on intercity train.

Train dog.

On vacation in a truly lovely, undervisited country. Been thinking a lot about leaving academic law librarianship. I make less than 100k with two grad degrees to work what is essentially two jobs and I'm never, ever off the clock. IDK. And the more everything we do becomes about AI, the less I care.

Does anyone have any good right-leaning investigative journalism pieces about govt, politics or law? After getting slammed by a student who basically wrote, "Stop talking about politics; just shut up and teach," I'm feeling like maybe I need a bit of a change to save my job/sanity in the near-term.

I don't know how closing out the year and preparing for next semester is going for anyone else who wants to have an actual vacation, but I'm thinking about crawling under my desk to die.

I am not usually an I-told-you-so type, but people need to go back to the emails and find what they missed.

I miss my father very much, but I don't miss shopping three times a year for a man who had literally no hobbies or interests.

So all it took was a swing in an off-year election and suddenly the news can news. Unbelievable. But, I'm glad all of you are here and have been very interesting and informative for the last few months. Happy Thanksgiving!

You just know David Brooks thought he was really saying something when he wrote that NYT column. I guess I wouldn't want anyone to read the E emails either if JE called me a "pseudo-intellectual" in them. Or if I repeatedly worked on projects with his friends.

I always feel like peeling off my skin after interviews. I find that the internal bad feels sometimes warp my external perception. What actually matters is what
YOU thought of THEM.

Interesting that Dmitriev thinks the Russian position on Ukraine is being heard. Wonder what's happened in the past week to suddenly give the Russians leverage again. /s

I'm seeing a lot of people predicting a scrubbing vs. ongoing investigation. And if that proves to be the case, then we need to split it up and work on it like a 1970s newsroom. Because there's no way they'll do it flawlessly or even competently.

Re: the docs. I'd like to see journalists dig more into Tigran the model scout, who worked for both T and E. There's also an unrelated email that uses idiot-code ("11" as in "she'11"). Might be worth checking for other instances of intentional substitution. Also, ew to all of it.

I gotta think the move for Boebert is to claim traffic and show up at 4:15. She's damned either way.

If only my senators believed in America as much as I do...

I literally cannot process speech this fast. Props to SCOTUS if they can. Based on the skepticism of the justices alone, I think we can pretty much say "just hang on a little longer" to small businesses.

For the sake of my blood pressure, I'm gonna need the NYT to stop doing man on the street interviews with voters.

I can't even with the Bluebook 22nd. Law, Law as first word, Lawyer=different abbreviations. 18.2.2(c)=timestamps should be provided in 24-hour clock format with a time zone designation. There's an actual DST instruction. Seriously, get bent. Glad you made law review; maybe try a library course.