Jared Gardner

Nancy suspended in air with stars coming out of her eyes

NANCY mood of the day

The post-truth era began the day the oxford comma became optional

As a faculty member at Ohio State, watching how the pace of hiring despite the dearth of students or curriculum is frankly shocking. Fortunately, nothing could possibly go wrong. 😬

NANCY walking in the pouring rain with an umbrella but gnats swarming her face

This is a NANCY panel o' the day feed now

Moms would make good assassins

That is cold, mom

a cartoon of a man sitting on a couch with a cartoon network logo on the bottom right ALT: a cartoon of a man sitting on a couch with a cartoon network logo on the bottom right

Working in public higher ed today—staff, faculty, administration—is to live daily knowing there are people who think we’re “the enemy,” are brainwashing vulnerable children, or stealing public funds—& they’re watching for any stumble to punish imagined sins. The stress tax is growing unsustainable.

To say this is a massive disappointment would be a severe understatement: this is a center that was foisted upon OSU because we were supposedly incapable of engaging with challenges to our ideas with civility. And this is how the center models civil engagement? :(

And the associate director followed up the assault with this: bsky.app/profile/roos...

This is so depressing and ugly. A professor at the state mandated conservative thought center here at OSU commits assault. :(

Dammit. Always the bridesmaid...

Sadly one of the best films of the year, NO OTHER CHOICE, didn’t get a foreign pic nom or it would be a perfect companion.

I’m wanna defend our dad in Secret Agent… he is being hunted by assassins?

(I think I got too excited about the prospect of writing “drownin’ bag” and lost the thread… )

Including the ability to synthesize multiple streams of information and to make connections across traditional disciplinary boundaries. And to keep their humor and humanity in the face of the waking nightmare they have lived in their whole lives. 2/2

The imaginary g-grandad wasn’t the best way to get to what I wanted to say, which is: yeah, young folks today struggle to focus on long novels & even long films. As a teacher of novels & film for 35 years it’s a bummer, & i do think they are losing something. But they also have powers i do not 1/2

. You know who REALLY had attention? My great grandfather who had no entertainment other than James Fenimore Cooper novels and drowning cats. Kids today can’t even finish a racist epic or collective enough cats to fill the drownin’ bag!

We are wrestling with the mechanics of posting thousands of syllabi each semester . It is going to be a challenge but we will get there by compliance time. Personally since syllabi have always been public records I don’t find that this one keeps me up at night — except the logistics part 😳

Digital Hygiene & the Ivory Scare: Email Our employers in higher education share lots of information about digital security, most of it is focused on protecting institutional data. This is important stuff, always, especially as it can involv...

At @campus-novel.bsky.social: Of possible interest to my higher ed peeps who are thinking more about digital hygiene in 2026 than they have in the past (for some reason 🤔).

Well, now that you mention it

Reading historical newspapers comforts me with the promise of headlines to come

Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim.

kids, not to get too radical here but i don’t want my govt to murder me

Translation: If you call the agent who murdered someone a “murderer,” it is just going to lead to them murdering more people. Don’t call it “murder” and then all the people they kill won’t have been murdered and people won’t be infuriated

Noem Attempts to Distract From ICE Execution - The American Prospect A day after an ICE agent shot a woman to death in broad daylight, the secretary of homeland security was in Manhattan urging Americans to buy them lunch.

prospect.org/2026/01/08/m...

I would march beneath that banner, swearing fealty until the end of time

Some of us remember how foundational the ham was in our lives. That’s what people mean when they say “never forget” (I think)

I miss the ham

Photograph of gold miners digging

The same people are getting rich off the AI bubble as got rich off the Crypto bubble—a bunch of folks getting paper rich raking off of venture capital inflows and self-dealing to cash out as much as possible; and one company, NVIDIA, getting seriously rich making the shovels for the gold rush.

Watching the news these days is probably what it feels like to be awake during surgery.