@debcha.bsky.social
Engineering professor. Author of HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS (on Riverhead in the US+, on Torva in the UK+). Interested in embodiment, materiality, metacognition, and systems. All enthusiasm is 100% genuine.
Fun fact: the Agaricus bisporus is *the* domesticated mushroom.
As a baby mushroom you know it as the cheap white button mushroom, as a kid mushroom it's called a cremini, as an adult it's called a portabella.
Same mushroom.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaricu...
A glorious paean to the power of living in a multicultural, pluralistic community.
24.01.2026 02:41 — 👍 55 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0My neighbor told me he keeps losing falcons to the widening gyre so I asked how many falcons he has and he said he just goes to the falconry and gets a new falcon afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding falcons to drown with the ceremony of innocence and then Yeats started crying.
23.01.2026 23:48 — 👍 882 🔁 230 💬 18 📌 5When Fahrenheit and Celsius merge ITS FUCKING COLD YALL
24.01.2026 00:30 — 👍 195 🔁 57 💬 8 📌 0I don’t agree with 100% of it, and we’ll see how it plays out, but eg:
“that cost of strategic autonomy — of sovereignty — can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than…building… fortresses”
“We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values.”
Okay, technically I *read* it, I didn’t listen to it, much less watch it. Full text of speech: www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
21.01.2026 19:48 — 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0I don’t make a habit of listening to speeches out of Davos, but this is genuinely one for the history books: a clear-eyed acknowledgment that the old international order was partly a fiction and is now a lie, and a call to act collectively to build resilience and sovereignty in the face of hegemony.
21.01.2026 19:45 — 👍 110 🔁 27 💬 4 📌 2I mean, it’s not the Elgin Marbles, but it’s still not okay for someone to have taken Portable from Canada and relocated it to the US. But yes, at least it was in public so it could be found and repatriated, and didn’t just disappear into someone’s rec room never to be seen again.
21.01.2026 19:15 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Not gonna lie, I’m pretty stoked to have found the EXACT use case for the phrase (see my follow-up reply with more detailed info if you missed why it’s a small boulder, not just a rock).
21.01.2026 19:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
For climbers: the rock is Portable, “the world’s smallest bouldering problem,” and it lives at the base of Superfly at Squamish. Someone posted a picture of it at Bishop, CA and it was recognized (despite the hat) and retrieved. gripped.com/news/stolen-...
21.01.2026 18:49 — 👍 9 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Today in Canada/US news: a beloved boulder* that went missing from its home in Squamish, BC in the fall was just found in the Californian desert (wearing a toque and goggles) and is on its way home now.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
*Only about 32kg/70lbs. It’s a boulder the size of a small boulder.
It’s Martin Luther King Jr Day today in the US, which means I am going to take some time and sit down for a re-read of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.
[HTML] www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen...
[PDF] www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets...
If you’ve heard me talk at any point in the past five years, at least, odds are good you’ve heard me reference this quote.
From her, “A Rant About “Technology””: www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about...
If you’ve heard me talk at any point in the past five years, at least, odds are good you’ve heard me reference this quote.
From her, “A Rant About “Technology””: www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about...
Yessss! I probably reference that quote at least twice a week.
19.01.2026 04:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I'm reading the Anne of Green Gables books to my kid and every six pages I have to explain about the old-timey disease that someone has died from and that now we have vaccines for. I wish antivaxxers would read old books.
18.01.2026 12:44 — 👍 39 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0I was familiar with South Africa's nuclear program but somehow had never heard of Renfrew Christie.
True dedication to a good cause. Years of prison incl. solitary confinement. He even got an Oxford PhD so that he could learn more about the country's power system to help sabotage it.
Hahaha apologies, I thought ‘let me just double-check, can’t believe it’s missing’ and found it, but you saw my response before I could delete it. 🤦🏽♀️ It is a GREAT song and I’m glad it’s top of mind for so many!
16.01.2026 05:31 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
I didn’t see the one that came instantly to mind for me? — Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfp...
16.01.2026 05:28 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0To me, as an engineering educator, fast is just part of it — it’s how it helps you find the *right* part because of what they show, the right filters, and especially the contextual information (I think about the little scale they had to explain the different hardnesses of rubber, for example).
16.01.2026 05:24 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0Same, although mostly because it’s not just that it’s fast itself — it’s that it supports *your* cognition, including with contextual material, to find the thing you are looking for (or the thing you didn’t know you were looking for until you started looking).
16.01.2026 05:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Good recent video about some of the smart things they do: youtu.be/-Ln-8QM8KhQ?...
16.01.2026 00:42 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.
15.01.2026 18:47 — 👍 4774 🔁 1398 💬 40 📌 140[I do kind of assume that everyone who is interested in websites know about McMaster-Carr’s site at this point, in addition to everyone who needs to buy parts, but I’m happy to explain *why* it’s so great if you’re unfamiliar]
15.01.2026 22:58 — 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr
McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr McMaster-Carr
mcmaster.com
A framed print that reads “Infrastructure is something we owe to one another. - Meg Smith” Made by Amanda Wyatt Visconti! It’s printed in a beautiful pink-blue gradient.
🤩 Thanks again to @literaturegeek.bsky.social for immortalizing this line from the NEH wake session at ACH. If I have a scholarly motto, this is it — infrastructure is mutual obligation and mutual benefit. #DigitalHumanities #DHMakes
14.01.2026 02:13 — 👍 61 🔁 15 💬 4 📌 0
An old time-y illustration of a Cats.
Today is Quintidi the 25th of Nivôse in the year 234.
Nivôse is the month of snow.
Today we celebrate cats. #JacobinDay
More information on cats
I know this is not the primary point, but that photo is a *wonderful* illustration for this.
12.01.2026 15:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
My first editorial in @science.org was published today: what to do (and, importantly, what NOT to do) when your grants are suddenly cut or research funding is uncertain. Please read and share!
#AcademicSky #Science #Astronomy
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
[cx link] I was invited by the Future Observatory Journal of the Design Museum, London, to contribute to the ABUNDANCE issue. I wrote about energy and matter — about updating our understanding of which of these is abundant and which is scarce, and building our future.
fojournal.org/essay/energy...
