Michael J. Faris

Finally got back down to 30 after a crazy September and start to October...

Finally got my inbox below 30. woot!

Fall 2025 is already killing me. Got my inbox down to 53 messages, the lowest its been in a few weeks, but higher than normal.

Carolyn Miller in the recent RSQ: "I will just question whether it’s helpful to think of rhetoric as having “methodologies.” Does this language engage in a kind of science-envy? Isn’t rhetoric, as a discipline, rather a set of questions, a habit of mind, an interpretive vocabulary?"

You know Routledge/T&F editing is crap when I'm excitedly reading a new article and I keep getting distracted by the copyediting errors instead of engaging with the authors' ideas.

Due to travel and then being sick today, my inbox hit 90+ emails today, which is anxiety inducing! Got it down to 45 after a few hours...

To give another example: I last made changes in a folder at 3PM on laptop A (less than 100MB changes, I imagine). From 6-9PM on laptop B, those changes haven't synced. Please communicate how you're fixing your app so that it actually works with all Mac OS

further, on one my computers, the Dropbox app must have updated or something and changed the settings (without my doing) to not have local copies. Now, that computer is going to spend 100s of hours to download files that had been local previously. Why I am paying you money for ineptitude?

.@dropbox.com I'm a Mac OS user and haven't even updated to the newest Mac OS yet, and your syncing has become incredibly slow and unreliable. It takes hours to sync just a few MB files, and I've had to quit and restart Dropbox and force quit Finder just to get things to sync. Can you fix your app?

Is Bluesky glitching for others? I tried the browser version before mobile, and there’s no compose button available 🤷

USPS received a package for me, delivered to Lubbock, and instead of delivering it to me, sent it to New Mexico. I just wrote feedback: “Uh, WTF?”

Odds I actually receive it?

Goddammit I have become too Type A to have any friends.

Thanks! I've got ideas percolating after last CCCC, but not sure I have the time/focus to continue on this... we'll see! <3

wrote my first Blog post in a long-ass time last night, on problems with accuracy of institutional (and field-wide) data: michaeljfaris.com/blog/2025/05...

One thing I really appreciate about TTU is that promotion dossiers for non-tenure-line faculty don't require external reviewers. Requiring that would be stupid, because external reviewers can't actually review their teaching, just what the institution and faculty member writes about teaching.

Starbucks in the SUB is the worst. They put black coffee in the drink queue so that you have to wait 15+ minutes for a drink they could hand you in 30 seconds

Likely

Not sure how, but as fascism rises, I'm managing to keep up with my email? inbox is at 9.

Inbox down to 13. Miracle.

YouTube video by TrishaYearwoodVEVO Trisha Yearwood - She's In Love With The Boy (Official Music Video)

This song came on the radio, and I'm brought back to my childhood, reminded of big hair, youthful love, and hay seed plow boys:

"She's In Love With the Boy" by Trisha Yearwood: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUFO...

and you won't even email receipts without extra clicks.

While I'm pissy: Why is it that I go through 1 provider (Covenant) and get 4-5 medical bills rather than just 1? Why not do your job & send a single bill that is easy to follow and pay? Here's what should happen: 1) medical experience, 2) 1 bill from the place I went to (not 4 different bills).

If these academic conferences continue with their uses of digital apps for programs, I'm gonna stop attending altogether. A dozen apps with a dozen logins and none of them are useful. What a waste of organization's money and my time. (Especially when my name is misspelled. WTF)

Love this story!

Opinion | How Hooters Became a Refuge for Young Gay Men Many fathers and grandfathers take their gay sons to the bar. It’s become a place of refuge — and how that happened is a curious story.

"What explains the connection between Hooters waitresses and young gay men? Perhaps these women ... see kindred spirits in the boys who aren’t quite “right.” Or maybe it’s simpler: a waitress’s knack for reading a room, turned tender for those who need it most."

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/23/o...

Vittoria Elliott Leah Feiger Feb 7, 2025 2:47 PM A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’ An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems “the single biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”

NEW: An internal email obtained by WIRED from a threat intelligence team monitoring US Treasury systems advised labeling DOGE operatives an "insider threat," adding that it recommended suspending their access "immediately."
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www.wired.com/story/treasu...

NIH is maxing indirect costs for grants at 15%.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Facebook messenger is the worst. Heads up: you message me there, my response is either to ignore it or to respond that you should email me.

We worked for months with USAID to build an $85,000,000 project to end TB in two regions of the Philippines.

The project is funded by private money, the Philippine government, and matching USAID funds.

It could provide a blueprint for eliminating TB worldwide--except it's...not happening.