Liz Gross (she/her)

Scene from OFFICE SPACE with Michael Bolton replying to Samir Nagheenanajar: “No way. Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.”

when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes

So many screaming children in this gate area.

Guess what I just did

small turkey made completely out of chocolate.

This was the turkey I ate for Thanksgiving. Between my husband and I, we finished the entire thing.

Hoping for six hours of sleep before the very early AM alarm goes off to get to the airport.

White House Wire Explore the White House Wire, your hub to trusted news sites and resources.

And there’s a state media operation in progress that I just happened upon. Granted, I’m limiting my news exposure, but… I feel like I should have heard about this.

www.whitehouse.gov/wire/

At no time did I use AI to write the article.

I understand that’s some people’s process, but I doubt it will ever be mine.

Now, I hope to get back to sleep for a couple hours.

Communicate How Your Campus Connects Education to Careers Students want quality jobs and expect that experience to start before they graduate.

In @insidehighered.com today, I synthesize research studies about how and where students are talking about career outcomes, spotlight 2 universities doing an excellent job with storytelling, and share 3 ways to tell outcomes stories that appeal to students.

www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

I woke up around 4am rattled from a dream in which the piece I submitted to a column in one of the higher ed trades was somehow replaced with AI slop when published and I was frantically demanding it be taken down.

So I had to check that what’s running today appeared as intended.

Is this why some people think LLMs are so great? Because it’s how words have always come together for them?

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...

This just blew my mind. I can’t imagine trying to read this way. 🤯

And I had no idea that most (i.e., more than half) 12th graders in the USA can’t read proficiently.

www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

Higher education is exactly the same.

Every sector of the 🇺🇸 economy & polity is exactly like this. Ronald Reagan & his lazy, selfish, juvenile talking point & his acolytes’ worn copies of Atlas Shrugged have done untold damage to our politics & society.

Lady next to me in the airport: I took a friend’s scrap jewelry to the “scrapper” and I got a few dollars… like $10,000

I think most people know what rotten eggs smell like, but far fewer people have actually smelled rotten eggs.

Deep Thoughts, by Liz Gross

It's the last year of the Farmer's Almanac. End of an era.

International Graduate Student Enrollment Drops Some colleges report dramatic declines in enrollment among master’s-level students amid visa issuance and immigration challenges in the U.S.

So, are they saying without actually saying it that the Department of Homeland Security international student visa are fishy, and we aren’t being told the truth by the government?

www.insidehighered.com/news/student...

If you're in open enrollment and your healthcare costs have stayed the same or only gone up a couple of percentage points, thank your benefits manager.

I just did.

When Broadway flops get a second life as student musicals Each year, many more Americans see live theater in local schools than on Broadway. So when a show has a short run in New York? It's not over.

A happy story for your timeline… especially all the former musical theater kids.

www.npr.org/2025/10/15/n...

Trump's National Guard deployments aren't random. They were planned years ago President Trump and several others now high up in his second administration have been talking about using the National Guard to help with mass deportations — and possibly invoking the Insurrection Act...

It was always the plan

www.npr.org/2025/11/03/n...

Called 21 people to thank them for their donation today. Spoke to about 5. Hope the rest actually listen to their voicemails.

I think I just accidentally started a new genealogy hobby.

Wonder what that will do to UF’s national rankings that they’ve been so focused on.

What do you think is the lowest possible client to partner/supplier ratio a professional conference can sustain?

OpenAI laying the groundwork for an IPO

"I think it's fair to say it is the most likely path for us, given the capital needs that we'll have," [CEO Sam Altman] said.

A Russian nesting doll of shit. The capital needs to run a business to create capital needs to run

www.reuters.com/business/ope...

This system confounds me.

This bill is a little over $100. It's fine.

Last month I received one for $3,300. 12 months after her stay, the hospital had finally managed to bill insurance correctly for her care, after 12 months of denied claims.

These visits occurred in September and November, 2024.

This statement, which is of course due upon receipt, is dated 10/13/2025. It's clearly been submitted to insurance (Medicare Advantage Plan), so I'm anticipating yet another EOB in the next few weeks to verify if she (Dad) owes this.

I'm now learning that when hospice is called in to support a patient at an interval outside of what is federally mandated, it gets billed to medicare as a separate code. Since Mom had frequent falls and bouts of delusions, this happened regularly.

My mom died just over 11 months ago.

This week she (well, I) received yet another bill for her care.

She was in a $14K/month nursing home, and received hospice care there through medicare.